THE INSTITUTE OF POLITICS PUBLICATIONS, WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES IN AUGUST, 1921 BY JAMES BRYCE MODERN DEMOCRACIES HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH THE STUDY OF AMERICAN HIS- TORY UNIVERSITY AND HISTORICAL ADDRESSES ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES IN WAR TIME STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHIES SOUTH AMERICA, OBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES IN AUGUST, 1921 BY JAMES BRYCE (VISCOUNT BETCH) JT3eto THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 All rights reserved PRINTED IN IHB UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE PRESIDENT AND TRUSTEES OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE Set up and printed. Published February, 1922. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA .fi DEDICATION To the Honorable CHARLES EVANS HUGHES My Dear Mr. Hughes: The interest you have taken in the Institute of Poli- tics and its aims, as well as our own long friendship, prompt me to offer to you this little book on Interna- tional Relations. You are one of those who are to-day working most earnestly and effectively for the promo- tion of cooperation and good feeling between States; and I need not say how warmly your efforts for that purpose are appreciated on this side of the Atlantic. Believe me Most truly yours, December 22nd, 1921. JAMES BRYCE. PREFACE These lectures, addressed to an audience which, though it contained professors of history and public law from many universities, was mainly non-profes- sional, do not attempt to deal with the more intricate branches of the large subject covered by the term In- ternational Relations. Now printed almost exactly as they were delivered three months ago, they treat of that subject only in a few of its broader aspects, and are directed to a practical aim which is at this mo- ment much in the minds of thoughtful men every- where. Painfully struck by the fact that while the economic relations between nations have been growing closer, and the personal intercourse between their mem- bers far more frequent, political friendliness between States has not increased, such men have been asking why ill feeling continues still so rife. Why is it that before the clouds of the Great War have vanished from the sky new clouds are rising over the horizon? What can be done to avert the dangers that are threatening the peace of mankind? This book is intended to supply some materials for answering the questions aforesaid by throwing upon them the light of history. It is History which, record- ing the events and explaining the influences that have moulded the minds of men, shows us how the world of international politics has come to be what it is. His- viii PREFACE tory is the best indeed the only guide to a compre- hension of the facts as they stand, and to a sound judg- ment of the various means that have been suggested for replacing suspicions and enmities by the cooperation of States in many things and by their good will in all. London, Dec. 22nd, 1921. CONTENTS LECTURE I. THE EARLIER RELATIONS OF TRIBES AND STATES TO ONE ANOTHER 1 Different views of primitive mankind The "state of nature" as between tribes; i.e., war is the "natural" relation of communities The theory of a Golden Age of Peace. First Period, War everywhere in early times. Second Period, An era of comparative peace under the Roman Empire The Monotheistic religions as an international force Influence of Christianity Islam. Third Period, Action of the clergy for peace; the Truce of God The Pope and the Emperor as guardians of peace Decline of ecclesiastical influence after the fourteenth century Cesare Borgia and Machiavelli Fourth Period. Wars of Religion between Christian states Plans for a general peace the Balance of Power Competition of States in seizing new countries. Fifth period, Events lead- ing up to the Great War of 1914 Decline of dynastic influences Political propaganda for international purposes The Congress of Vienna: the Holy Alliance Five great international figures The importance in history of the Individual Leader. LECTURE II. THE GREAT WAR AND ITS EFFECTS IN THE OLD WORLD ... 33 Causes that brought the War Germany and France in and after 1870 The growth of Armaments The Peace Treaties of Paris Causes of their failure to secure a real peace Germany after the War Dissolution of the Haps- burg Monarchy The New States; Austria, Czecho-Slo- vakia Frontiers of Austria and Italy: Tirol Hungary and Transylvania Yugo-Slavia, Albania Bulgaria, Ru- mania Russia and Siberia Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania Poland and the Ukraine The Turkish Em- pireConstantinople Armenia The Further East. LECTURE III. NON-POLITICAL INFLUENCES AFFECTING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 74 Production and industry Sources of natural -vealth Commercial and economic interests The influence of In- ix x CONTENTS ternational Trade for Peace and for War Protective Tariffs and Free Trade Trading influences as affecting Russia and Germany before 1914 Like influences as affecting the relations of England and Germany before 1914 Transportation and the routes of commerce The "Freedom of the Seas" Fishery rights Railroads Inter- national finance Loans to foreign governments and their consequences How far ought governments to inter- fere to aid traders and capitalists? "Satan's Invisible World." LECTURE IV. THE CAUSES OF WAE 112 Existing conditions in Europe Disappearance of Family Relationships as an international factor Decline of .the influence of religion on international politics Fanaticism in Muslim peoples The influence of racial sentiment Nationality as a Sentiment and a Fact Illustrations of in- fluences and conditions which create nationality Nation- ality and Liberty formerly associated, now less so The Principle of Self-Determination "Natural Boundaries" Difficulties that arise in trying to give effect to the princi- ple of Nationality International disputes arising froni the migration of the subjects of one State into the terri- tories of another Contacts of the White and the Coloured Races The influence of theoretical doctrines, on the rela- tions of States Influences making for friendship between Nations Intellectual influences as affecting or failing to affect the feelings of peoples towards one another Con- trast between the friendly feelings of individuals towards foreigners and the antagonisms of States The Politicians and the Press as influences affecting sentiment abroad Summary review of the various factors which make for amity or enmity between nations. LECTURE V. DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW . . , . . . .148 Diplomatic Envoys in the past and the present The qualities needed in an Envoy The duties of Envoys and services they may render To speak the truth or to conceal it? Some dicta regarding the practice of diplo- macy The real utility of diplomatic envoys Interna- tional Law Is it fit to be called Law? "Nature" as a source of International Law Rules regarding the conduct of War Recent violations of those rules Services which International Law may render Treaties and their dura- tion Instances of the repudiation of treaties Interven- CONTENTS xi tion and Neutralization The Cooperation of States for common purposes The need for revising and amending the rules of International Law Creation of a Body for the purpose aforesaid The enforcement of International rules. LECTURE VI. POPULAR CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY AND THE MORALITY OF STATES 176 The demand that the People should direct foreign policy By what method can the people act for this purpose? Difficulties involved: have the people the knowledge required? Arguments for and against the change pro- posed Cases in which Popular Control may work well Will Popular Control raise the Moral Standard of State action? Why has that Standard been low? Standards why higher for Individuals than for States The Argument of State Necessity Two theories of the Duty of States What the State may not do, and will injure itself by doing There is nevertheless some difference between the duty of a State and that of an Individual. LECTURE VII. METHODS PROPOSED FOR SETTLING INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES 206 Diplomatic Conferences and Congresses The Berlin Congress The Hague Conferences The Reduction of Armaments Problems involved in Reduction of Land and Sea Forces Methods for removing causes of international friction that threaten war Arbitration in the cases called "Justiciable" Instances of Wars which Judicial Arbitra- tions would not have averted Mediation or Conciliation Cases to which this method has been or might have been applied Merits of the Method How should a Concil- iating Authority be created? What functions should it have? LECTURE VIII. OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR .... 235 (a) Alliances, offensive and defensive, or defensive only Rights between States inherent in such Alliances, (b) A Super-State or Federation of the World Objections to a Super-State: the differences between the Component members too great No such unity now exists as existed CONTENTS in Europe when the World State was advocated in the Middle Ages Existing States would refuse to join the contemplated Federation, (c) A Combination of Civilized States formed for the purpose of preventing war Essen- tial requisites for such a Combination Organs needed for its effective action Difficulties that might arise in its working Compulsive Methods available: the Commer- cial Boycott, or a possible resort to force Necessity for some joint action to avert war Lessons which the Great War has taught The welfare of every nation now in- volved in the welfare of others What the United States might effect for the world The need for a sense of World Citizenship Responsibility and power of every member of a Democracy. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD STATES LECTURE I INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST. THE subject assigned tc me in the arrangement of the courses of lectures to be delivered to this Institute, viz. : the relations of States and peoples to one another, is one of vast extent, which covers or is closely con- nected with nearly every branch of the principal human sciences, Ethics, Economics, Law and Pol- itics. The matters with which these sciences have to deal have all of them affected the relations of inde- pendent communities, and History is a record of the phases through which these relations have passed. But the subject, although very large I might say because very large admits of being briefly treated. Since no one will expect a lecturer to enter into details, he may confine himself to mapping out the subject, drawing its general outlines, noting the salient features and the most critical issues, and examining some few of the presently urgent problems. In order to explain what the international relations of the Old World States were before the Great War and are now, I propose to devote the first two lectures to a rapid sketch of the character which relations of nations i 2 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and States have borne in the past, so as to show what the general experience of mankind has been and through what recent experiences it reached the point at which things stood in the fateful year 1914, when the powder train that had been so long in laying was fired. In this lecture I will try to give you passing glimpses of the ancient, mediaeval, and modern world, proceeding in the next to describe the international situation when the war broke out, that we may see what were the causes and conditions which brought about that war and made it an extension unprecedented in the annals of mankind. My aim is to lay before you a statement, clear and impartial, so far as I can make it so, of Facts. Many are the theories that might be constructed, many the reflections with which the facts could be adorned, we can all spin theories and delight ourselves with re- flections at our own pleasure but before allowing our- selves such enjoyments, let us have a clear and con- nected grasp of the facts. Now and then I will ven- ture to illustrate general propositions I may have to state by referring to incidents that have come within my personal knowledge, some of which are not re- corded in books. Those whose memory goes back a long way are exposed to the danger of indulging too much in recollections of the bygone days recollec- tions which have a keen interest for those who re- member the circumstances and conditions, now for- gotten by their juniors, through which the world was traveling sixty or seventy years ago, but which are apt to be comparatively uninteresting to the present gener- ation. Nevertheless, concrete cases recollected in their environment help to illuminate. When we can INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 3 connect a general proposition with an illustrative in- stance, it seems to become more real and more fertile in suggesting lines of thought worth following. Some few words at the outset about a subject old but never yet exhausted and not likely to be exhausted, viz. : Human Nature by which I mean not merely the nature of Man, but Man as he was in a State of Nature. The significance of this point for the study of inter- national relations is that although in civilized countries every individual man is now under law and not in a State of Nature towards his fellow men, every political community, whatever its form, be it republican or monarchical, is in a State of Nature towards every other community ; that is to say, an independent com- munity stands quite outside law, each community own- ing no control but its own, recognizing no legal rights to other communities and owing to them no legal duties. An independent community is, in fact, in that very condition in which savage men were before they were gathered together into communities legally or- ganized. It is well to insist upon this point, because those who are accustomed to live in civilized communities where every citizen is subject to the law of his own com- munity, do not always realize that the Community itself is outside law altogether. It is in precisely the same condition in which stood our savage an- cestors, or rather the savage ancestors of those Indians who were here before your ancestors came, when every tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois stood in a State of Nature towards every other and had no rights and no duties and no law except what people call the Law of Force. That is exactly the position in which every 4 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS civilized community stands now. It is a law unto itself, subject to no legal control and therefore to no responsibility, except that (to be subsequently con- sidered) which the public opinion of the world imposes. Now what really was the State of Nature? There have been two theories about it, two conceptions of the facts and the forces at work, and the history of international relations records the long conflict be- tween these two views or conceptions, a conflict in which there has been and will be no victory, because each view is true, based upon facts which belong to man's mental constitution, and yet not so completely true as to exclude the truth of the other view. "War," says Plato, "is the natural relation of every community to every other" : 7r6Xe/*os <f>v<rei Mpxti irpds oTrAaas rds TroXeis. So another ancient Greek observer said : "Every man is a wolf to every other man": &j/t?/>cS7ros dj>tfpd>7r<i> Xu/cos. Many other wise men, ancient and modern, have spoken to the like effect. Yet there has been, and that from the earliest times, another view of the nature of man and of what is called the State of Nature. Over against the doctrine of the Wolf and the state of war there was also a doctrine of the Lamb and the state of peace. The poet Hesiod describes to us a Golden Age in which there was no strife, and many of you will remember that Virgil, in his famous Fourth Eclogue, amplifying the traditions of the older poets, makes the Sibyl prophesy the return of an era of un- broken peace like that which is described in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah. If the pessimist school of thinkers can point to history as a record of incessant strife, the optimist school can find in their study of man's soul and essence a basis for their hopes of betterment. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 5 The Stoic philosophers looked upon man as a being in whom evil impulses were in constant conflict with right reason and therefore thought of him as attaining his true nature when these passions had been subdued by reason and the sense of justice. That peace in the soul which Reason ought to give seemed to them to be natural because nature tended of herself to evolve what is highest and best in man; and when that tendency had prevailed, man would be at peace with his fellows. Various thinkers in various ages have hesitated between these two conceptions or have tried to hold them altogether. In the foreground they saw man as he has shown himself in history, a creature of aggressive propensities prompting him to rob or kill, while behind these they saw an amiable vision of Man as he may once have been in an age of innocence, or as he may again be when either religion or philosophy has tamed the impulses that move him for evil. Each school of thinkers can take Nature to mean either the sum of the mental or the moral phenomena which belong to man as they have usually throughout history displayed themselves in action, or can discover in those phenomena a vital principle, the development of which, along the lines the Creator has prescribed, will by degrees subdue the lower passions and enthrone the higher passions hi power. Though I must turn away from the field of specula- tion to that of Fact, let us try to remember through the whole course of this inquiry into the relations of States to States two fundamental propositions. One is that every independent political community is, by virtue of its independence, in a State of Nature towards other communities. The other proposition is 6 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS that the prospect of improving the relations of states and peoples to one another depends ultimately upon the possibility of improving human nature itself. You may say that a sound and wide view of national in- terests, teaching the peoples that they would gain more by co-operation than by competition or by con- flict, may do much to better the relations of communi- ties. But in the last resort the question is one of the moral progress of the individual men who compose the communities. Communities are nothing at all except so many individual men, and human nature will ad- vance no further in communities taken as wholes than the members of the communities themselves advance. And this is the reason why those who seek to improve human society must begin by working as individuals; not to throw the responsibility upon the communities, but to remember that the community is what the men and women make it. Human Nature in the civilized nations and international advance can only go on if it goes on simultaneously in many nations human nature can only be raised and sustained by the effort of individuals. Can it be raised to and sustained at a higher level than it has yet attained? That is the great question, and that is the question to which I hope to return in a later lecture of this course. Now let us turn to history. The relations of nations to one another are those of War and Peace: it is of these I shall have to speak to you. Now from ancient times History shows us far more of War than of Peace. If ever there was a Golden Age, the ancients had to con- fess that there were no records regarding it, and no- where have any traces of it been discovered. When the curtain rises that curtain which conceals the INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 7 dark prehistoric past we see fighting everywhere over the earth. All the races of Europe were fighting Celts, and Iberians, and Slavs, and Teutons. Each tribe was always at war with other tribes. So were the great civilized kingdoms of antiquity, Syrians, Baby- lonians, Lydians, Medes and Persians, with wild hordes of Kimmerians and Scythians descending from time to time out of the bleak and misty North upon the lands of sunshine and wealth. All around the Mediterranean, Greek cities were living in constant conflict with one another, and the neighboring cities were the most hostile. Athens hated Megara, Thebes hated Plataea, Spartans hated and fought with Messen- ians. And this was true of Gauls and Spaniards also. These facts which ancient historians report are exactly similar to those which we know from the reports of travelers who have visited the newly dis- covered countries since the voyages of Columbus and Vasco de Gama. Everywhere war, everywhere the de- light in war. The Sioux and the Blackfeet and the Crows upon the prairies of the Missouri River fought with one another with the same fierceness as Campbells and Frasers and Macdonalds fought in Scotland upon the shores of Loch Etive and Loch Lochy. In Hawaii and in Tahiti and in New Zealand, chiefs were always at war with their neighbors. Still more ferocious upon this continent were the feuds of Mexican tribes like the Aztecs and Tlascalans with one another. It was the same in Africa, where Tshaka, the king of the Zulus, slaughtered all his neighbors eighty years ago in South Africa, playing the part there of the Mongol conqueror Timur, who was known by the piles of skele- tons that he left behind him. The only mitigations of 8 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the all-pervading practice of strife were to be found in the protection that was accorded to heralds or messen- gers bearing what we should call a flag of truce, and in the recognition of certain customs regulating com- munications between enemies; and along with these customs in the practice of calling as witnesses to an agreement supernatural beings, such as the deities of earth and heaven, whom we find invoked in the Iliad when a truce was made between the Greeks and the Trojans, and such as the Sun and the Wind when an agreement made by Irish kings in the days of St. Patrick was placed under their protection. I mention these things because they are the first beginnings of what has been developed into a kind of international law. International law began in connection with war, because war was what brought peoples most frequently and directly into relations with one another which needed some kind of regulation. And we may perhaps add that there was even in the rudest tribes some sort of vague disapproval of certain kinds of behavior, such as the killing of prisoners by torture, massacres upon a great scale, unprovoked attacks upon a harmless tribe, the violation of a promise made in a particularly solemn way. Yet this disapproval was seldom strong enough to restrain any chief or any community that saw direct advantage to itself from high-handed aggres- sion or from a breach of faith. To the incessant bloodshed and plunder which I have described as characterizing everywhere over the world this first period of international relations, there succeeded what may be called a Second Period an age of comparative peace, and indeed the only season of widely extended peace which civilized mankind has ever enjoyed. This second period, which was on the INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 9 whole the most peaceful era the civilized peoples have ever seen, dates from a little before the beginning of our era, though not necessarily connected with it. Rome had conquered the world, as the result of a series of wars which brought the whole Mediterranean world and part of the East under her sway and she set herself in the days of Augustus to repress all strife within the limits of her realm. The absorption and unification into the gigantic Roman dominion of many kingdoms and many city states caused their in- habitants after four or five generations to begin to think of themselves as being all Romans, and gave them what would be called to-day the term is, of course, a new one a kind of Collective Nationality. This unification effected by the conquests of Rome left no international relations subsisting within the Em- pire, though such relations continued to exist with barbarous or semi-civilized peoples outside the Em- pire, such as the unsubdued Teutons In northern Ger- many, such as the Caledonians in North Britain, such as the Parthians, and afterwards the Persians, away beyond the Euphrates. This Pax Romano, was not a perfect world-peace, because there was always some fighting on the Northern, Eastern and Southern frontiers, and some internal conflicts between rival aspirants to the imperial throne. But still it was a better time than there had ever been before, or than there was to come for a long time thereafter. The most interesting feature for us moderns is that in this second period there appeared a new force which has ever since influenced the relations of states; I mean the influence of the monotheistic religions. Their action on politics is one of the most curious and note- worthy points in the whole course of the history of 10 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the relation of states to another. The monotheistic religions, because they are monotheistic, ore mutually exclusive. In the pre-Christian world every people, however attached it was to its own deities, admitted the deities of other peoples as being equally true and equally disposed to help their votaries. Even if those deities inspired the disgust which Juvenal felt for the animal gods of Egypt, still there was no disposition to interfere with their worship, for each people had a right to its own gods, the protectors of the land they dwelt in. But the Christian church, after it had triumphed over the various idolatries older and newer in the fourth century, began to lend itself to the sup- pression of pagan rites, and still later it embarked upon a career of persecution which lasted in Spain down to the end of the eighteenth century. Everybody can see now how absolutely opposed to the teachings of the Gospel persecution was. But after the fifth century no one seems to have seen that till far down in the Middle Ages. Thus a new ground for international enmities arose. Thereafter another monotheistic re- ligion appeared in the seventh century. That was Islam. Now Islam was militant and intolerant from the very first. It did not need to decay or decline into a state of intolerance, as Christianity did, because it was meant to be intolerant. It put to the sword all idolaters, including the Fire-worshippers of Persia, who were its first victims, and it reduced the "Peoples of the Book," as the Mussulmans call the Jews and the Christians, to a subjection which left them very little except their lives. Now Christianity, being a religion of peace which preached good will among men, and a religion which INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 11 had prevailed by spiritual forces only against the physical force of the Roman imperial government, might have been expected to change the face of the world by leading the nations that accepted it to obey its precept to love one another. Its mission was to put an end to wars, at least among Christians, and its duty to the heathen was to treat them not as enemies or as wilful sinners, but as fellow-creatures who had dwelt in darkness and who were to be illumined by the soft light of the gospel. These things, however, did not come to pass. When differences of doctrine arose among Christians, they became the cause first of anger and antagonism, and presently of armed strife. The Prankish King Clovis, himself very recently and very imperfectly converted, alleged as a ground for his attack upon the Visigothic Kingdom of Aquitania that "these Arians ought not to be permitted to possess the best part of Gaul." Three centuries later Charle- magne forced Christianity upon the Saxons by the sword, and after three centuries more the Norwegian Saint Olaf earned his title of saint by no merit except that of fighting against heathens, for there was cer- tainly nothing in his character or career except fighting against heathens to justify that title. His predeces- sor, King Olaf Trygvasson, had set an example of forcible conversion by making a venomous snake crawl down the throat of a heathen chief who refused to be converted. All through the Dark Ages there was practically as much fighting between those who called themselves Christians as there had been in any previous age. The only result of the appearance of the new religion in the field of politics might seem to have been to add a 12 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS new cause for war, either against non-Christians or as between one section of Christians and another. Some- times even prelates, like Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the brother of William the Conqueror, or the Bishop of Jaen in the last war of the "Catholic Kings" Ferdinand and Isabella against the Moors of Granada, themselves took armor and fought to kill. This is perhaps the sad- dest of all the disappointments that history records. A spiritual power had arisen in the world which seemed capable of extinguishing the bad passions of mankind and the greatest evil from which civilized society had suffered, and this power did not fulfil its mission or ac- complish its task. The propensities of human nature were too strong for it. Instead of bringing together into one body men of different races and faiths, it created a distinction between those within and those without the pale which provided a reason for aggression and an excuse for ferocity. The Spanish Conquistadores in Mexico and Peru seem to have thought themselves justified in slaughtering the Indians because the Indian natives, not being Christians, were deemed to be out- side the pale and not under the protection of God. You may remember that the Dominican monk Valdes, who acted as^chaplain to Pizarro, said to the Spaniards when they were preparing for their great massacre of the Indians in the square of Caxamarca, "I absolve you, Castilians; fall on and slay." Nevertheless, the principles of the Gospel were not so completely forgotten as to make good men desist from efforts to restrain violence. At the end of the tenth century, when private war was so general over the whole European Continent that practically every layman had to put himself in a state of defence against INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 13 everybody else, French Synods began to proclaim what was called the Pax Ecclesice church peace which for- bade private war at certain periods; and some years later there was created a Truce of God, which all men were required to swear to observe during certain holy seasons and for certain days in each week. Those regu- lations, which were meant to apply to private warfare rather than to regular wars between potentates, were enforced by ecclesiastical penalties. They were con- stantly broken, so that someone remarked that as much sin was being committed by perjury as was committed by the fighting which the oaths were meant to check. Nevertheless, these attempts constituted a sort of standing testimony by the Church to the duty that was laid upon it to promote peace. These attempts usher in what we may call a Third Period. The first was that which saw endless wars in the early Mediterranean and West European world; the second was that of the Roman Empire, and this third period covered five centuries, and in it an at- tempt was made to apply Christianity to the better- ment of political relations. When the authority of the Pope as Universal Bishop became generally recognized in the West, it became part of his functions to prevent, as far as possible, international as well as private wars, and the similar, though less complete, recognition of the Emperor as the secular head and ruler of Christen- dom imposed upon the latter a like duty. This was the first serious effort ever made to treat the whole body of Christians as a single ecclesiastico-civil com- munity bound to obey two sovereigns God had placed over them, sovereigns charged with functions of main- taining order and repressing violence here on earth and 14 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS of leading men to eternal felicity thereafter. The doctrine was expounded in many books, the most famous of which two treatises well deserving to be studied at this day are the book called De Monarchia, written by Dante Alighieri, and the book called "The Defender of the Peace" Defensor Pacis, by the younger contemporary of Dante, Marsilius of Padua. No one denied this doctrine of the rights and duties of the Emperor or the Pope, but while it gave immense power to the Pope, who could inflict spiritual penalties which men feared, and who often used them with a righteous purpose, it did far less to help the Emperor, who had no correspondingly effective power; and so it happened that the authority of the latter practically disappeared after the middle of the thirteenth century. The system was grand in its conception, but it broke down when the two Supreme Powers quarreled, and for a couple of centuries they were seldom even on speaking terms. Their quarrel fatally weakened the Emperor, while temporal ambitions so invaded and corrupted the Church that the Pope and the bishops lost by degrees their moral authority and found their spiritual weapons blunted by having been frequently abused for non-spiritual ends. The high aspirations which had marked the beginning of the thirteenth century died away and before the middle of the fif- teenth a decadence had set in which seemed to threaten all the influences of Christianity upon national and international life. This decline was especially conspicuous in Italy. Religion had in Italy been formalized and divorced from ethics. The blessing of such a man as Rodrigo INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 15 Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, was still supposed to have a sort of magical effect, 1 but no one could have received from him with a grave face any exhortation to virtue, and it is fair to Pope Alexander to say that he had too much humor ever to offer such exhortations. The growth of the arts and of material prosperity had made private warfare less frequent, so there was not quite so much bloodshed and ferocity as there had been, but force and fraud were recognized as the inevitable and hardly blameworthy methods which States must em- ploy against one another. The typical representative of Italian statecraft was Cesare Borgia, one of the most interesting figures of the Renaissance, with a career typical in Italy, as that of Louis XI had been typical in France, as that of Ferdinand the Catholic was typical of the succeeding age in Spain. A manual of the applied science of statecraft was supplied by Ma- chiavelli in his book called The Prince, a work which has exposed his memory to undeserved obloquy, be- cause he did no more than describe and examine what was the accepted practice of his own time. There was nothing in the book which sovereigns had not been doing for ages, nothing which plenty of statesmen have not been doing ever since without needing to turn to Machiavelli's pages for guidance. This brings us down to the Fourth Period, which opens with the great ecclesiastical schism of the six- teenth century, for it saw the emergence of new phenomena which profoundly affected the relations of States to one another. Religious differences arising from the teachings of Luther and Zwingli and Calvin *An amusing instance may be found in Ferdinand Gregorovius' Life of Lucrezia Borgia. 16 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS created new grounds of international hostility. Protes- tant monarchs and peoples, threatening and threatened by the Catholic monarchs, quarreled with one another, till in the year 1618 their strife led to a war that dragged on for thirty years and bled Germany white, leaving her impoverished, desolate, exhausted. At last the year 1648 brought a peace which was memorable for two reasons. It was arranged at the first of those great European congresses which at Osnabriick and Miinster, thereafter at Utrecht in 1713, then again at Vienna in 1814, then at Berlin in 1878, then at Paris in 1919, assembled to settle the terms of peace after a great war. The two Treaties of Westphalia (1648) re-constituted the relations of the leading Powers for many years, laying a foundation for all subsequent efforts to determine their respective rights. These treaties turned what had been that mediaeval Empire which claimed to be Universal into a sort of Germanic Confederation, dividing central Europe into two sections, Roman Catholic and Protestant, ap- proximately equal in population and resources, so that each might hope to be able to defend itself against the other. The scheme framed for Germany became the basis for all Europe of what was called the Balance of Power. Here we touch a very important point in the evolution of international relations, because the Balance of Power was the center, or what might be called the mainspring, of European politics for more than two centuries from that date. The idea had sprung up that in order to prevent any one State from becoming strong enough to threaten the independence of other States, there must always be maintained an equilibrium between the great States. When any INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 17 monarchy, such as at one time Spain, at another Austria under the Hapsburgs (who were usually closely allied with their Spanish kindred), at another period France under Louis XIV, came to constitute a menace to its neighbors, those neighbors felt bound to form a league for their joint protection against the danger. This idea or scheme was often abused. It led to alarms that were sometimes ill-founded: it created what have been called Preventive Wars wars made to-day in order to prevent a war from being made to-morrow, efforts to repel attacks which might never have come. Thus discredited by misuse, it became a term of reproach as a delusion of kings and diplo- matists. Nevertheless there were moments, such as that when the power of Louis XIV dominated the European continent, when there really did seem to be need for a combination of other States to resist an ag- gression which would have injured peoples as well as monarchs, and the career of Napoleon Bonaparte showed that the danger was not extinct. After the fall of the Napoleonic Empire Russia became the Power which was most generally dreaded, until the Crimean War in 1853 and thereafter the war with Japan disclosed her weakness. We know what alarm the mili- tary strength of Germany began to excite among her neighbors after 1870. From the earlier years of this Fourth Period we note the beginnings of what may be distinguished as secular plans, because they differ from the ecclesi- astical plans that I have already described to prevent wars by forming combinations of independent king- doms for that purpose. In these plans there emerge rudimentary ideas of international conciliation and ar- 18 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS bitration. The incessant wars of the fifteenth century- suggested to the great Erasmus the need for some con- certed efforts to secure peace, and those of you who have not seen it may be advised to read a little book of his, published in the early sixteenth century and quite recently reprinted, called The Complaint of Peace, in which Peace personified raises her voice of lamenta- tion to say that although Christianity is her friend and advocate and everybody professes to desire her beneficent presence, she is everywhere wounded hi the house of her friends. This need for some concerted ef- fort seems to have been first suggested to the Bohemian king George Podiebrad by one of his ministers. Much later it prompted Henry IV of France or his minister Sully to devise a scheme called the "Grand Design," which contemplated a so-called "Christian Republic," to be presided over by the Romano-Ger- manic Emperor, with a Council or Perpetual Senate, consisting of sixty-four Commissioners, who were to debate questions of common interest and preserve peace by settling disputes between nations. The idea was revived later by the Abbe de St. Pierre, in France, and won sympathy from the great Leibnitz. It is to the same sense of the evils of war that we must assign thet beginnings of International Law as something more than a mere body of commercial customs. It was just before the beginning of this period that the field of international politics was enlarged by the discovery of new lands, the claims to which created fresh grounds for rivalry and strife among European potentates. When the Portuguese and Spanish naviga- tors were exploring the unknown shores of the tropical Atlantic, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull delimiting INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 19 the regions which each Power might appropriate. Presently England, Holland, and France came upon the scene, the two former disregarding the claims of Spain and Portugal, and building up colonial domin- ions for themselves. This process of appropriation, whence arose many wars, was supposed to have ended thirty years ago by the carving up of Africa into areas assigned by various treaties to France, Germany, Britain, and Italy; but still later the United States took Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Isles, and, more recently, Germany lost her recently acquired African and Oceanic possessions, which were at Ver- sailles allotted to various Powers to be administered under mandates. The only parts of the world that have not now been appropriated in some way or other by Powers belonging to the European races are China, Mongolia, Japan, Persia, Abyssinia, Siam, and some fragments of Western Asia. Even the islands of the Pacific are virtually ruled either by some white Power that is to say, a Power of European origin or by Japan. Finally, by a series of gradual changes during the nineteenth century we pass out of the Fourth Period into the Fifth, which comes down to the end of the Great War in 1918-20. It is characterized by two new phenomena of great import. The first of these new phenomena is a change and enlargement in the meaning of the word "State." During previous periods "the State" had meant, in a monarchy, the personal ruler, in republics, such as Venice, or Genoa, or Hamburg, a small ruling clique. Louis XIV, when he said, "I am the State," spoke the truth, for his per- sonal will (though of course largely guided by his 20 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS advisers) was supreme. The army and the navy and the civil service were his own, obeying his com- mands. All over Europe it was the sovereigns who made war and peace at their own pleasure, not con- sulting their peoples. Territories, passing by rules like those which in every country determine the succession to real estate, were inherited, conveyed and adminis- tered like private property. Those who served in the army and navy were everywhere regarded, and re- garded themselves, as being the servants of the Crown. Kings appointed and recalled envoys at their own sweet will and pleasure, and kings were usually, unless they were too stupid or too indolent, the directors of their own foreign policy. But in the course of the nineteenth century the personal power of the Sov- ereign waned everywhere, and what was, nominally at least, the power of the people was substituted, until at last a final blow was given to this system by the destruction in 1918-19 of the three great empires of Russia, Austria, and Germany. The other new phenomenon arises from that last mentioned. It is the growing employment of what are called "propaganda campaigns" for the diffusion of ideas and sentiments among peoples. Nations, or sections of a nation, or sections present in several nations which try to act together, endeavor to spread and win support inside or outside their own countries for the doctrines which they unite in holding and wish to diffuse in other nations. Religions or religious sects have often done this: it is now done by the votaries of political or economic doctrines also. Propaganda has this peculiar quality, that it can work by non-offi- cial methods and agencies altogether irrespective of INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 21 organized governments. Governments can resort to it, and sometimes do so, but it is also now largely used by sections of nations, and can be so used to any extent. It appeals not to force, but to opinion or prejudice. All the international relations that we have been hitherto considering were relations of force. Propa- ganda is a war on opinion by opinion, and therefore it is or may be at the same time a means of spreading useful opinion and a danger to honest opinion while al- ways a tribute to the power of popular opinion. Being an effort to make or capture opinion, it may be disin- terested, springing from a sincere faith in some princi- ple, the influence of which its votaries seek to extend. But it may be used in a less worthy spirit by any group or section of persons who have their own and possibly their selfish aims in view. The first conspicuous in- stance of it was shown in the proclamations that were issued by the French Revolutionary leaders in the European wars from 1792 onward. They sought to awaken or stimulate opinion against despots by preaching in Germany and Italy the glories of Liberty and Equality. Since those days the public opinion of the civilized peoples in general has become a powerful factor in international politics, sometimes by alarming those rulers of any particular country who have in- curred the displeasure of the bulk of opinion in other peoples, sometimes by stimulating a minority in one country to greater efforts because it counts upon sup- port from sympathizers in another country. Thus the volume of opinion which in Britain was shocked hi 1847-49 by the cruelties perpetrated by the Neapolitan government on political prisoners, and which there- after with increasing force approved the efforts of 22 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Italian patriots to free their country from domestic tyranny and from foreign rule, did much to encourage those patriots, and caused whatever influence the British government at any moment possessed to be usually exerted in favor of Italian freedom. Even as far back as the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, and the interchanges of views and plans between the Great Powers which followed, and again in the attitude of George Canning and President Monroe and John Quincy Adams towards the insurgents in Spanish America whom the Holy Alliance wished to help Spain to reduce to obedience, the liberal sentiments which prevailed in Britain and the United States proved to be no contemptible factor in international affairs, for they were capable of influencing the action of their governments. This was true also at the time when Kossuth pleaded the cause of the Hungarian people before British and American audiences in 1850, and during the years when, between 1858 and 1860, the Austrians and the petty princes of Italy were being ex- pelled from their dominions in that country. Three other more recent illustrations are worth noting, for they help to explain three kinds of propa- ganda which are being employed to-day, different in aims, but similar in method. The first is that of those revolutionaries in Continental Europe who, rejecting patriotism and nationality, seek to spread, some of them Anarchist, others Communist doctrines. The former hope to destroy all existing States, and the very notion of any compulsory power vested in the State. The latter propose to transform all existing States by turning them into huge industrial coopera- tive societies in which there shall be no property and only one class, the so-called Proletarian. Both these INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 23 propagandas justify and zealously practice the use of force, but both aim at success by appealing also to opinion. Another species of propaganda is ethnological, a curious recent invention. It is an appeal to the senti- ment of racial solidarity in a people which is politi- cally divided up, living under the dominion of sev- eral States. Pan-Slavism used to be preached both in Russia itself and by Russians in countries with a Slavonic population, such as Serbia and Bosnia, the idea being that all the Slavonic peoples should, so far as possible, unite themselves as one under the patronage of Russia, the greatest Slavonic state. The idea of what is called Pan-Turanianism, the notion of a union of Asiatic peoples speaking languages of an agglutinative type, such peoples as Turks and other Tartars, Kirghizes, Kalmuks, and so forth, seems to have been invented by some German savant as a weapon to be used against Russia as well as against the Christian races of the Near East. Some few Germanized Turks, like that varnished ruffian Enver Bey, tried to employ it in the Great War, but as far as one can gather it has been pretty nearly crushed out between the Communist propaganda of the Bol- sheviks on the one hand and the Pan-Islamic propa- ganda of the Turks on the other. Pan-Islamism, the third kind of propaganda, and the largest and the most formidable, is an attempt to renew the original aggressive movement of the Muslim peoples against the Christian, and in particular to strengthen the Turkish Sultan by exalting him as Khalif of the whole Mohammedan world, a plan due to the restless ambi- tion of Abdul Hamid, who tried to rehabilitate an almost extinct title and claim of a semi-religious kind 24 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS in order to repair the Turkish loss of military strength, and sent his emissaries into India in order to create dis- affection to the British Government, which had begun to press him for better treatment of the Eastern Christians under his abominable rule. The Khalif literally successor is not, as some have sought to represent him, a spiritual authority like the Pope, but primarily a leader of Muslim hosts in war and a leader in public prayers in the Mosque. He may be deposed and Abdul Hamid was in fact at last de- posed for a breach of the Sacred Law. All these efforts, official and non-official, spring out of the emancipation of the masses of the people from the control of their former rulers and the consequent desire to capture public opinion. It has now become worth while to appeal to the peoples. As long as the monarchs had the sole or even the usually predominant, power, it was not the peoples that were thought of, but the sovereigns. That is to say, modern propaganda is an attempt to turn to account that deliverance of the peoples from the habit of unreasoning obedience which made the masses, formerly indifferent to politics, acquiescent in whatever international action their Governments chose to take. All the kinds of propa- ganda described resemble one another in transcending national boundaries and in creating a fanaticism which may be just as unreasoning as, and more dangerous than, obedience used to be. I have referred to the Congress of Vienna. It, and 4he Holy Alliance to which it gave birth, deserve a word of further mention, because they embody yet an- other attempt to create a system for the prevention of wars. This time the attempt was made by a secular INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 25 instead of an ecclesiastical authority, but it was made after the fall of Napoleon, in the name and under the then dominant influence of the Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and of those two much less interesting po- tentates, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia. That which these three Emperors proposed to do sounds very curious when read to-day. They declared solemnly before the world that they "take for their sole guide the precepts of justice, Christian charity and peace as being the only means of con- solidating human institutions and remedying their im- perfections," with much more to the like effect; and they go on to say that "they will themselves put these principles in practice both towards their subjects and towards one another." These three exalted beings who proposed to guide the world to justice and peace were, in fact, very fallible human creatures, two of them by no means models of virtue. It is right to say that the Tsar Alexander had a quick and mobile intelligence, and also, mingled with his vanity, a really philan- thropic spirit. How the Holy Alliance failed you all know. It was based upon that illusion of the divine right of kings which had in the sixteenth century replaced the older illusion of the divine commission given to the Roman Emperor, and it was an illusion which would have needed angels instead of weak and selfish men to put its principles into practice. Intrigues and jealousies raged among the members of the Congress at Vienna, and their divergent interests soon drew them apart. England, which had never been a member of the Holy Alliance, soon found herself in opposition to the anti- liberal policies of the three Emperors, and she, acting 26 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS with the United States, checked their plans for helping Spain to crush her revolting colonists and reestablish despotism in the New World. That was the last effort to create peace on the basis of autocratic doctrine thinly disguised under the robe of religion. To complete this brief sketch of the Fifth Period and before I proceed to describe the existing relations of civilized States, some few sentences may be given to five prominent figures who did most, either by the work they achieved, or by the example they set, to make Europe what it was in 1914. These five typify in a striking manner the diverse tendencies that were at work in the revolutionary period that began with 1789 and their careers show how greatly individual men affect the march of events. Of these international men two were ministers of monarchies, two were revolutionaries, and one was both a revolutionary and a monarch. That was Na- poleon Bonaparte, whose place in modern history would be as great as that of Julius CaBsar in ancient history if the world had not grown so much wider in the seventeen centuries that separated the Roman hero from the Corsican. Napoleon changed the face of European politics as Caesar had done when he con- quered Gaul, when he impinged upon Germany and Britain and assured the supremacy of Rome around the Mediterranean. No single man since Dr. Martin Luther had done so much to influence^, the march of events as Bonaparte did between his first Italian cam- paign hi 1796 and his failure against Russia in 1812. In France he rebuilt the fabric of administration. Clear- ing the ground in Germany and Italy, he gave a death blow to what remained of feudalism, and he awakened INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 27 the peoples to a desire for freedom and a sense of na- tionality which he had no intention to inspire. Show- ing what might be effected by a highly trained army in the hands of a military genius, he made the attain- ment of a world-dominion seem possible, a deadly ambition to implant in any military chief or militant nation that might follow, and set therewith an example of an absolute disregard of good faith and ruthless indifference to human life which brought the standard of international conduct to a point almost lower than that at which the Prussian Frederick II had left it. Not only did the victories of the revolutionary armies disclose the weakness of the old monarchies and de- prive them of the respect they had received from their subjects, but the monarchs themselves lost moral au- thority as persons. The subjects saw the selfishness and turpitude of those who as heads of ancient and famous dynasties had been credited with a sense of dignity and honor, and the glamor of reverence faded. The Corsican adventurer had torn the veil away, and sovereigns had grovelled before him. The second great figure is Bismarck. He, too, was daring, and successful by his daring; almost as un- scrupulous in his methods as Napoleon, though far more unselfish in his aims, and rather less false in his dealings. Superior to Napoleon in his perception of what was and what was not attainable, he effected the unification of Germany and created afresh the domin- ance of Prussia by sagacious foresight and by a skilful use of the sentiment of national pride, using alternately an adroit diplomacy and an overwhelming military force. Though he never concealed his contempt for constitutional doctrines and the rights of legislatures 28 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS his services to the nation made him popular, and justi- fied his methods in the nation's eyes. But and here again he may be compared to Napoleon he did a dis- service to his own country by the pernicious precedents he' set. Those traditions of unscrupulous craft which, practiced by Frederick II, Bismarck inaugurated afresh and invested with the fascination of success, captivated the mind of his nation. The men into whose weaker hands the conduct of policy fell imitated his boldness but forgot his prudence, because they had not his gift for grasping the totality of the European situation. But though much of the work which Bismarck accom- plished by his diplomatic arts was undone by his suc- cessors, it is probable that in the future the chief part of it may remain, and it is also possible that in the future his example may become a warning instead of a lure. The three other international men who adorned the last generation must not be forgotten. Cavour was a practical statesman, not inferior to Bismarck in his power of seeing what was possible and in choosing the means to compass it. He, more than any other states- man, brought about the unity of Italy, doing his work in a patriotic spirit, not without guile he confessed it himself but perhaps with no more guile than the character of Louis Napoleon and the other men he had to deal with might seem to excuse. Kossuth, too, like Cavour, was a patriot, and would have created or re-created a free Hungary but for the irresistible horde of Russian invaders launched against her by the Tsar Nicholas I. Old men among you in America can still remember the impression which the stately presence and impassioned eloquence of the INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 29 exiled Hungarian leader made upon them as upon English audiences. I remember very well the en- thusiasm aroused in Glasgow by a speech he made there hi 1850. And late hi life, when he was past eighty years of age, I saw him again, and admired afresh his undimmed intellectual force and the old air of lofty dignity. Mazzini, whom also it was my privilege to know, was an idealist, far higher in quality than most states- men and with a greater power of influencing men through their best emotions than most idealists have had. He appealed to the deepest feelings and stirred the noblest hopes of his countrymen, preaching a gospel of liberty and a brotherhood of peace among the peoples whom he sought to liberate. His amis were not attained in the form he desired. Well do I recall the vehemence with which he insisted that the monarchy of the House of Savoy, which had already, when I saw him, embraced all Italy except Rome, could never accomplish for Italy what he believed a republic would accomplish. The behavior of the free peoples under republican as well as under monarchical forms has not verified Mazzini's hopes, but the impulse he gave supplied the motive power which the practical statesmen like Cavour employed, and his writings may yet help to inspire some later generation. I note the careers of these men as instances to show how large is the unpredictable element in the field of international as well as in that of domestic politics. Modern writers claiming to be scientific try to repre- sent general causes as everything and the individual great man as no more than some particular being in whom the general tendencies of an age find practical 30 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS expression. "If these tendencies," they say, "had not been embodied in Bonaparte or in Bismarck or in Cavour, they would equally well have been embodied in and given force to some other personality." History contradicts that assumption. The man who gives ef- fect to the tendencies may make all the difference, and the coming of the man is unpredictable. Crises arrive when some leader in the sphere of thought, like Maz- zini, or in the sphere of action, like Bismarck, is needed to personify and carry to success the effort an age seems to be making. Sometimes the man appears, but far more frequently the man does not appear and that which he might have done is not achieved. Had there been no Bismarck and no Mazzini we should have seen to-day a very different Europe. Had there been Bis- marcks and Cavours and Mazzinis since A.D. 1900 we should have seen a very different Europe to-day. All calculations, all predictions must leave a wide margin for the influence which the presence of some powerful personality may exert. The fact that the ultimate source of power resides in the people often obscures the fact that in all political action, and especially in foreign relations, the people as a whole I say this less of your country than I say it of Europe, but there is some truth in it everywhere in all political action, and especially in foreign relations, the masses of the people have com- paratively little knowledge and even less initiative. Broadly speaking, the people are what their leaders make them. Under every political constitution that has ever been devised the Many are inspired and led by the Few. Indeed, the larger the mass, the fewer are those to whom it looks and whom it follows, for the less the mass knows of the real facts and the really INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE PAST 31 significant issues, the more must it depend on promi- nent individual men for guidance; and the fewer are the prominent figures that can be watched and judged. How are the people to judge of the men whom they are to trust and follow unless they can constantly watch them? How can the people watch them unless they have time to do so? How can the people judge of their actions in foreign relations unless they under- stand those foreign relations themselves and see whether the men are guiding wisely or not? Never- theless, however little international issues are within the knowledge of the Average Man, the Average Man must trust somebody. In a wood any trail is better than no trail at all, for it promises to lead you out somewhere. He who scrambles wildly over the rocks and through the thick bushes may go round and round and arrive nowhere. When one traverses after night- fall a dangerous mountain path the local peasant who knows something about the path must be followed, whatever the risks. He may miss his way, he may conceivably wish to lead you astray, but if you have no knowledge of your own, it is safer to follow him rather than grope in the dark among precipices. European peoples, as we shall presently see, have been groping in the dark for the last three years, and their relations to one another during and since the War have been left to a few guides. How these guides attempted to deal with these relations, and with what success, we must now proceed to inquire. I shall endeavor in the next lecture to give you some few facts regarding the political condition of the Old World States at the beginning of the Great War and at its end also, so far as it can be said to have ended, 32 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and we shall then have some materials for judging whether the wisdom with which international relations need to be handled has grown with the progress of the years. LECTURE II THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS. THE last lecture brought us down to our time, that is, to the beginning of the Great War in 1914. Let us now see what were the events and the forces that had led or driven Europe to the verge of the abyss into which her nations plunged in that awful year. The plunge was sudden, but the propulsive forces had been long at work. The direct occasion and proximate cause of the war was the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo, followed by the ulti- matum which the Austrian Government delivered to the Serbian; but the real sources of strife lay deeper and the study of them must begin by a study of the conditions hi Germany, which had been since the days of Charles V the political centre of Europe. The mighty German nation which had so recently as 1871 become one State had come to hold a position which af- fected the relations of all the other countries to one another. The Napoleonic wars had shattered its an- cient and outworn territorial arrangements, and it found itself in the year 1848, the Year of Revolutions which some of you may be old enough to remember and down till 1864, when the war of the Germanic Confederation against Denmark opened a new era, divided into two groups or sections, the Germanic parts of Austria, with a number of the minor States, forming one group, calling themselves the "Great Germans" 33 34 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Grosse Deutscheri), while the other group, headed by Prussia, including others of the minor States, were called by their opponents the "Little Germans," i.e., those who held that a united German State would get on better with Austria outside it rather than within it. The growing passion for National Unity, no less than the ambitions of the Prussian king and aristocracy, who protested against the leadership claimed by the Hapsburg dynasty, more ancient but more sluggish and unprogressive than the Prussian Hohenzollerns, led to the war of 1866, which brought about, along with the exclusion of Austria from Ger- many, the break-up of the Germanic Confederation and the creation of a North German League dominated by Prussia. Though this League was a matter of purely German concern, against which other Powers had no right to protest, Louis Napoleon, supported for once by French opinion as a whole, saw in it a menace to France, which feared the creation of a great State whose army had shown, in its brilliant victories over Austria, the amazing military efficiency it had attained. The old suspicions which the German and French peo- ples had entertained of one another as far back as the days when Louis XIV seized Alsace were suddenly in- tensified. It was this alarm which France felt at the rise of a formidable neighbor, together with the con- comitant belief in Germany that Louis Napoleon was contemplating an attack upon Prussia before she had completely absorbed the other German States, that precipitated the war of 1870. Well remembering the events of that fateful year, in the autumn of which I was traveling in America, I feel able to say that both in the United States and in THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 35 England the French Emperor, long deemed the dis- turber of the peace of Europe, was regarded as the aggressor, and that in consequence the sympathy of the large majority of Englishmen and of Americans went with Germany at the outbreak of the war. In 1914 most Englishmen and Americans had forgotten these facts, and they saw in the behavior of the Prus- sian Government in 1870 only an anticipation of the action of that Government in 1914, totally different as the circumstances were on the two occasions. For a decade before 1870 American and English Liberals looking upon Louis Napoleon as the standing danger to the peace of Europe expected his overthrow to usher in an era of tranquillity. Italy had been unified, her national aspirations satisfied, all was going well with her. Might not the same happy result be expected from the recognition of the principle of nationality in Germany? This difference between the two outbreaks of war needs to be remembered. English Liberals, drawing a parallel between the cases of Germany and Italy, they extended the same sympathy to the desire of the Germans to be united in a single free State that they had long been giving to a similar effort in Italy. Liberal principles had been making way in Germany up to 1864 and seemed likely to gain further strength. Why should France fear a free Germany? This was also the general sentiment in America. Few, if any, foresaw the course things were destined to take. Who could have supposed that German liberalism would wither away under the influence of victories and the military spirit victories fostered? How fallible are the human judgments even when 36 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS those from whom they proceed are impartial specta- tors! When in 1871, at the end of the war, Germany took away from France Alsace and part of Lorraine, a new and abiding source of hostility was created. Though the great bulk of the population of Alsace was Teutonic in blood and speech, the annexation was unwelcome even to the bulk of the Teutonic element. Yet it might, perhaps, have in course of tune been ac- quiesced in by the Alsatians had not the German Government committed two fatal errors after the an- nexation. Its severe rule in Alsace kept the in- habitants disaffected, and, knowing that France would seek to recover the lost provinces, it from time to tune threatened her and sometimes, as in 1875, seemed to contemplate armed aggression. This, coupled with the rapid growth of population and wealth in Germany, drove France to seek support elsewhere. She found it in Russia, which had become alienated from Ger- many after the fall of Bismarck, while the German Government, after it had lost Russian friendship, strengthened itself by alliances with Austria and Italy. All these five Powers went on increasing their armies by imposing a practically universal compulsory service on their inhabitants, and when Germany began to create a strong navy, England, in which there had been theretofore no antagonism to the Germans, took alarm and set about increasing her fleet, conceiving that as she had only a very small army and did not produce enough grain to feed her people, she must make herself absolutely safe against invasion and against the risk of a blockade which might starve her people. Attempts made to bring about an intermission of the building THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 37 of warships failed, and suspicion became in both coun- tries more acute. Before the end of the nineteenth century the enor- mous expansion of naval and military armaments was not only beginning to drain the resources of the six great nations, but was keeping them in a state of perpetual anxiety. Attempts were made at two Hague Conferences to reduce this tension, and to provide better means for the settling of international disputes. These seemed to promise a measure of success, but the causes which made France and Russia suspicious of German and Austrian designs were not such as any Court of Arbitration could deal with, for they raised no legal or so-called "justiciable" issues; nor could any mediation induce either the Russian or the Aus- trian Government to agree to a scheme which would remove the causes of trouble which distracted South- eastern Europe, where rival nations Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks and Rumans had each its aspirations and found in Austria or in Russia support for its claims. The tension remained. Europe found itself on the edge of a catastrophe, and at last the catastrophe came out of an event the murder of the heir to the throne of Austria which was the work of a group of irre- sponsible ruffians. That which had been making the crash inevitable was the mind or rather, perhaps, the temper and nervous excitability of the parties con- cerned. The growth of armies had produced a large military and naval caste, a great profession in which the habit of thinking about war had in some countries grown to be a mental obsession, almost a disease. The 38 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS building up of huge armies and navies had created the desire to use them. Shakespeare has said : "How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes ill deeds done." It was natural that Generals and Admirals always occupied with drilling and manoeuvres and the study of battles and campaigns should grow weary of waiting for an opportunity that seemed never to arrive of turning their knowledge to account and putting their theories to the test of practice. They were like dogs trained to hunt but kept always on the leash. Would you be surprised if a football team constantly practis- ing, but never allowed by the college authorities to go forth to contend against another team from another college, should some day break loose and seek out an- tagonists equally impatient? So long as powerful naval and military castes exist, it will be hard to keep down armaments. The narrow avoidance of war on several occasions had left the governments and the military castes not more, but from year to year less pacific in spirit, for there was no will to peace. Any spark was enough to fire the train. Fear, moreover, was added. Russia and Germany each feared the other, each dreaded a sudden attack by the other. Let us allow to the Ger- mans the benefit of that consideration. They really were in bona fide terror of what Russia might do and thought that their chance was to strike at Russia be- fore the onslaught which they certainly expected from her had actually materialized. Each Government was supported by the mass of popular opinion. Each felt impelled to strike before the enemy whose attack it feared had carried preparations further. THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 39 After the War came the settlement by the repre- sentatives of the victorious Powers assembled at Paris, not a fortunate spot for the deliberations on which they were entering. Of them and of the methods they employed this is not the place or the time to speak. You have all read the books which have been written, both about the war and about the negotiations at Paris. You have believed some things and you have dis- counted other things. This certainly may be said: The work that was done by the representatives of the Powers assembled at Paris has received in Europe little but censure. There are some people who like some parts of the treaties, but I know of no person who has ever praised any treaty as a whole ; indeed there seems to be no treaty that has not received far more blame than praise from any competent authority. Comparing these treaties negotiated at Paris with those which were framed by the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, Euro- pean critics I am not here giving my own opinions, but trying to represent to you what one hears from all parts of Europe European critics observe that the men at Vienna, the Tsar Alexander, Metternich, Hardenberg, Castlereagh, Talleyrand and the rest of them, may have had bad principles and employed despotic methods and disregarded or misconceived the interests of their peoples, but at any rate they knew what they were doing and they gave effect to their principles. Their work, after all, bad as it was, be- stowed upon Europe a tolerable peace which lasted for more than thirty years. But there is not one of the treaties of 1919-20 which is not already admitted to need amendments. Some are utterly condemned by results already visible. Some are seen to be leading 40 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS straight to future wars. One hears people say all over Europe: "The sort of peace that these negotiations have given us is just as bad as war." With these strictures and with many others you are familiar, and you will judge for yourselves how far they are deserved. But let a word be said in extenua- tion, indicating reasons why some compassion should be shown to these much-criticised plenipotentiaries. Let us as against these severe judgments give con- sideration to the difficulties which faced the negotia- tors at Paris. The men at Vienna had a common ground in their faith in monarchical principles and in their reliance upon military force to carry out their principles. They had only monarchs to consider, not peoples, and they could do what they thought best for the interest of those whom they served. But the ne- gotiators of Paris differed in their principles and ideas, and not all of them seem to have believed in the princi- ples they professed. Some European critics have sug- gested that there were among them persons who thought that they must play down to their own electorates and regard not altogether what ought to be done but also perhaps even more what would ad- vantage them in their next electoral campaign. Popular prejudices, popular passions and cupidities, had to be humored or gratified. Moreover and this is an excuse which must not be lightly brushed aside the task before them was one of unprecedented difficulty. New States had to be created, territories redistributed, indemnities secured, and all upon a scale incomparably greater than any international conference or congress had ever before THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 41 attempted to deal with. A task so great needed not politicians of the usual type, but persons of the quali- ties which it is the fashion to call those of the Super- man. We are all supposed to know, vaguely at least, what the Superman is. Taking the term in its best sense, Supermen were needed men who possessed wide vision, with a calm judgment raised above the revengeful passions of the moment, men loving justice and seeking for justice, looking beyond the present to the future, seeking the good of mankind as well as the temporary advantage of their respective nations; men who were able to appreciate the workings of those bet- ter forces which alone can bring peace and reconcile- ment to a distracted world. Such men did not appear. Why should they have appeared? Why should they have been expected? There is no saying more false than that which declares that the Hour brings the Man. The Hour many and many a tune has failed to bring the Man, and never was that truth more seen than in the last seven years. To describe the existing relations between the Great States of the Old World as settled by the Paris Conference for I leave their proposals for securing the future peace of the world and their scheme of Mandates to be considered later it is convenient to begin with the four great Empires which were between 1914 and 1919 either destroyed or divided, viz.: Russia, Germany, Austria and Turkey, and to explain what is the attitude to one another and to their neighbors in which each of the States now created out of these four Empires stands. My aim is to convey to you, in the briefest outline, an impression of the position in which 42 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the European peoples find themselves, of the feelings they entertain towards one another and of the conse- quences to be expected from these feelings. Do their emotions tend towards war or towards peace, or shall we see prolongation of that intermediate state of suspicion and preparation for war which is almost as bad as actual conflict? First, a word as to Germany, which though reduced in area is still Germany, still a mighty nation, full of in- tellectual force united by a strong national sentiment. Germany, which continues to call herself the Reich (the Realm), albeit now a republic instead of a mon- archy, is the most populous of European countries after Russia, with inhabitants industrious as well as highly educated and with great productive industries. Be- tween her and France the ancestral antagonism, dating back to the day of Louis XIV's aggressions, is now more bitter than ever, and seems likely to last in France as long as the French generation lives which remembers the devastations wrought in 1918 by the re- tiring German armies, and to last in Germany at least as long as her government continues to pay immense sums in reparations and indemnities for the losses which the Allies suffered in the war. Dissatisfaction has been freely expressed in France that the Treaty of Versailles did not detach from the German realm and assign to France all the German-speaking lands west of the Rhine. It is argued that their possession would have secured to the French strategic advantages, as well as the industrial benefits which the soil and the minerals of those lands offered. But it may be doubted whether France would not have suffered THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 43 more politically than she could have gained materially by a repetition of the error which Germany committed when she annexed Alsace and part of Lorraine in 1871, for the population of the Germanic territory taken would have been disaffected, and no German would have ceased to plan and work for the recovery of what are, upon the principle of nationality, purely German lands. Some have argued that as France desired to keep Germany weak lest she should again become formidable, it might have been a more promising policy to dismember the Realm in the hope that dis- memberment would revive the old "particularistic" spirit among the German populations, and thus keep the Southern States, such as Bavaria, Saxony and Wiirtemberg, from seeking reunion with the other Ger- man regions. Plans were suggested by which the ex- periment might have been tried, though clearly op- posed as it was to the principles enounced in the well known Fourteen Points. But there was little prospect of ultimate success before it. This war has shown one unprecedented feature, painful in the prospect it opens. The victors bear as much resentment against the vanquished as the van- quished do against the victors. I say "unprecedented," for I can recall no similar case, though not venturing to say that none has existed. There is no blacker cloud, pregnant with future storm, hanging over Europe now than that which darkens the banks of the Rhine. Not even after Jena in 1806, not even after Gravelotte and Sedan, and the capitulation of Paris in 1871, has the prospect of reconcilement between the two neighbor peoples seemed so distant. All the gov- 44 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ernments committed grave strategic and still graver political errors during the war, but none seems likely to prove more deplorable in its results than the devasta- tion ordered by the German High Command while its armies were retreating in 1918. Into the tangled question of indemnities and their mode of payment I will not enter. Enough to say that though everyone agrees that the claim to indemnities is based on principles not contested and often applied before, it remains doubtful what will be Germany's ability to pay. The name "Austria" has now, by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, returned to its original meaning as denoting the two archduchies of Upper and Lower Austria (the East March of the old Romano-Germanic Empire in the eleventh century), to which were added later Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tirol and Salzkammergut. These countries, largely mountainous, do not provide sufficient food for their in- habitants, and have little beyond timber and some min- erals to export. Productive manufacturing industry was concentrated in Vienna, which supplied goods to all parts of the Monarchy, as well as (in some lines of trade, such as glass and fine leather work and up- holstery) to foreign countries also. Before the peace negotiations began at Versailles, the non-German parts of the Austrian dominions had revolted. Bohemia and Moravia were predominantly Czech in population, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, half of Istria and Carniola were Slavonic, as was Galicia also. The Treaty of St. Germain made with Austria recognized these ac- complished facts, which were in accordance with the principles of nationality, and proceeded to determine THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 45 the frontiers of the greatly reduced Austria (now a Re- public) and of the new republics which were creating themselves out of the large so-called Austria, or rather Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which had existed before 1914. In the case of the re- public of Czecho-Slovakia, the boundaries of the an- cient kingdom of Bohemia were adhered to on the North and Southwest, although such a frontier in- cludes several millions of men who speak German and deem themselves Germans. This departure from the principle of nationality may, perhaps, be defended on the ground both of antiquity and of the difficulty of de- parting from the so-called "natural frontier" which is indicated by the mountain masses of the Riesen Gebirge on the Northeast, of the Erz Gebirge on the Northwest, and the Bohmer Wald on the South; and Professor Masaryk, the President of the Czecho- slovak Republic, one of the three great men whom the war has brought to the front, and a man whose declarations may be trusted, has declared the wish of his State to treat, as it will be true wisdom for it to do, the German element with full friendliness and justice. It is, nevertheless, possible that difficulties may here- after arise from the desire of that element to be added to their Germanic brethren on the other side of the mountains. In Carinthia, where the German popula- tion is mingled with a Slavonic (Slovene) population, the expedient of a popular vote or so-called Plebiscite was fitly resorted to, under the supervision of persons appointed by the Allies and the expression by the ma- jority of its wish to be included in Austria has been judiciously respected. The third question that arose related to the frontiers 46 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS of Austria and Italy. Italy may well be held entitled to claim that the territories which lay along the Carnic or so-called Dolomite Alps, away to the northeast of Venice, should be included within her limits, because, although those territories contain a certain Slavonic element, the line of the Carnic Alps does furnish a con- venient defensible frontier, and the possession by a possibly hostile Power of districts on the Italian slope had long constituted a menace to Italy. But now we come to another and very different case. That is the case of Tirol. The territory which used to stand on our maps as Tirol consisted of two parts, one, the old County (Grafschaft) of Tirol (so called from an ancient castle near Meran), which passed by in- heritance to the Hapsburg family in A.D. 1335, the other the bishopric of Trent, which comprised the lower valley of the river Adige before it enters the Lake of Garda, together with some tributary valleys (Val di Non, Val di Sole and Val Sugana), lying northwest and northeast of the cathedral city of Trent and subject to its bishop. Of these two territories the latter is en- tirely Italian speaking, and was justly claimed by and allotted to Italy. 1 The foreign region, however, is, except as respects a very small area on its southern border, where the Italian-speakers predominate, a German-speaking land, and in no part of the Austrian dominions had there been a stronger loyalty to the house of Hapsburg, nor was there when the war ended a more fervid patriotism and more determined will to share the fortunes of Germanic Austria. Nevertheless, *I omit many details, for to deal with them would lead me far from the main lines of the settlement to be described. THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 47 the Italian government put forward a claim to annex all that part of Tirol proper (the ancient county) which lies south of the main chain of the Rhaetic and Noric Alps, alleging that they needed that lofty chain as a strategic frontier, although in point of fact the configuration of the watershed and the valleys would have given Italy a more defensible frontier further south, at the defile of Klausen. Italy had, of course, no historical title whatever to the purely Germanic region she sought to acquire. However, the principle of Nationality was, in this case, thrown overboard by the Allied Powers, and a quarter of a million of German Tirolese, countrymen of the national hero, Andreas Hofer, who had led their forefathers in a gallant resistance when Napoleon transferred them to Bavaria in 1805, were handed over to Italy as if they had been so many cattle. England and France defended their action in agreeing to this breach of principle by pleading a secret treaty in which they had promised this territory to Italy in 1915, when they were endeavoring to induce her to enter the war on their side. It was a promise that ought never to have been made. The other Allied Powers had no such excuse to offer, and do not seem to have offered any. 1 Whether they did not know what they were doing or whether they knew but did not care has not been announced. * It may be added that the strategic arguments, whatever they may be worth, which the Italian Government alleged in 1915 for desiring to have the Brenner frontier against Austria, lost their force when Austria sank from being a Great Power with fifty millions of people to a petty State of six and a half millions. 48 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Vorarlberg, a small mountainous region on the east- ern bank of the Rhine before it enters the Lake of Con- stance, and one which has usually been treated as part of Tirol, expressed its wish, after the collapse of the Hapsburg monarchy, to be admitted as a Canton into the Swiss Confederation which it adjoins, but the Swiss Government did not accept the offer, opinion in Switzerland being divided on the subject, and opposi- tion on the part of France apprehended on the ground that the annexation might strengthen the German ele- ment in Switzerland. In point of fact, it would have been rather to the advantage of all the Allied Powers to have allowed Vorarlberg to go to Switzerland, in which event it would have shared the neutrality which Switzerland enjoys, rather than to have left it in an economic situation which forces it to desire union with Germany. Here it may be noted that the Treaty of St. Germain forbids Austria as a whole to unite her- self with Germany, a disregard of the so-called princi- ple of Self-Determination which the Allied Powers justified on the ground that such a union would strengthen Germany. The Tirolese have recently taken a popular vote by which they expressed a wish to be joined to Germany, but there is no present likeli- hood that this wish will be regarded, so this question remains to cloud the prospects of future tranquillity. No part of Europe, except, of course, Russia, has fallen since the end of the war into a state of poverty and misery so pitiable as has Austria, and especially the once proud imperial city of Vienna. The severe terms of the Treaty of St. Germain, treating her with her greatly reduced resources as liable for a very large part of the sum due for reparations and indemnities by THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 49 the old monarchy, piled on her a load of debt so far exceeding her capacity to pay that the currency sank to less than one per cent of its former value, and the starving population of the towns (especially of Vienna) has been kept alive by charitable gifts from Great Britain and America. No voice has, so far as I know, ever been raised in any of the Allied countries, and certainly not in the United States or Britain, to justify the harsh, not to say cruel, terms of that treaty. The economic difficulties were aggravated by the stoppage of the supplies of coal and food which Vienna had formerly received from Bohemia, Moravia, Hun- gary and the now emancipated Slavonic regions on the South. These countries ceased after 1918 to export to Austria, and it is only recently that some coal has begun to come from Czecho-Slovakia. This misfor- tune might have been averted had the Allied Powers made it a condition of their recognition of the new States that they should impose no regulations prevent- ing free trade between themselves and Austria, which they had been wont to supply with what she needed, receiving from Vienna manufactured goods in return. Conditions of permanent peace, with a promise of a return to normal relations, economic and diplomatic, cannot be expected until these questions of commer- cial intercourse have been adjusted. The British Gov- ernment and the French Government have now begun to recognize the seriousness of the situation, and have recently arranged a conference to be held between these former Austrian states and Austria in order to rectify, if possible, these mistakes, committed when the treaty was made. Hungary, the other half of the Austro-Hungarian 50 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Monarchy as it stood before 1914, had been an inde- pendent State ever since the Magyars, a Finnic people from the borders of Europe and Asia, entered the Middle Danube Valley in the end of the ninth century, and came within the circle of European civilization under their first Christian king (St. Stephen) in the beginning of the eleventh. Before the war she, with Transylvania, constituted an independent king- dom under a Hapsburg king. It had a population of seventeen millions, but of these not more than half were of Magyar blood and speech, the rest belonging to various other races, Slovaks in the Northwest, Ruthenes (a Slavonic race) in the Northeast, Rumans in parts of the East and of Transylvania, and Serbs hi those southern districts which border on Serbia, There was, therefore, a case for detaching from the central, purely or predominantly Magyar, part of Hungary those surrounding regions in which any of the other above named races was evidently more numerous than were the Magyars, at least if the members of any such race showed a wish to be detached. The Powers as- sembled at Paris, however, went much further. By the Treaty of Trianon they took from Hungary large districts in the south in which the Slavonic and Hun- garian elements were nearly equal. They took from her in the northwest tracts in which Slovaks did not substantially outnumber Magyars, including the uni- versity city of Pressburg or Poszony, the ancient capital of the country. They took away the Ruthenian dis- tricts in the northwest without, so far as I have been able to ascertain, taking adequate measures to learn the wishes of the Ruthenian people itself, alleged by the THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 51 Magyars to desire the maintenance of its connection with them ; and they cut off from Hungary large regions in the east, in parts of which the Magyars constituted a majority, as well as the whole of Transylvania in which at least one-third spoke Hungarian, and desired to remain a part of the Hungarian realm. The effect of these territorial changes has been to strip Hungary of more than half of her territory, while also crippling her economically by taking away nearly all her forest lands and much of her mineral wealth, and educationally by depriving her of two of her chief universities. These are grave injuries, for no suffi- cient explanation has ever been given to the world for these measures which seem impolitic as well as unjust. You are'doubtless aware that a thick veil of secrecy has, from the first, hung over the proceedings of the nego- tiating Powers, and though subsequent revelations, not always 'discreet, have given some light, much still re- mains matter for conjecture. It is a singular fact that though no diplomatic proceedings for three gener- ations have been so important as those of 1919-20, and though never before was there so general a demand for publicity, none have ever been kept so carefully shrouded in mystery. The Magyars, although obliged to submit for the moment, have not concealed their resolve to recover whenever they can the territories of which they hold themselves to have been unjustly deprived. They urge that though it may be true that they did in time past abuse their control to try to Magyarize the non- Magyar elements in the population of Hungary, such past errors furnish no reason for now subjecting 52 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS them to unfair treatment at the hand of those other races to whose rule they have been transferred. Though in this case, as in others, provisions have been placed in the treaties of peace for .securing the rights of minorities, it is more than doubtful whether such provisions will be observed, nor can we be sure that the newly founded League of Nations, commissioned to enforce them, will have the power to do so. 1 It is much to be feared that the Treaty of Trianon has prepared in Hungary a fruitful soil to receive the seeds of future war, and that no good relations can be expected between her and her two southern neighbor states, to which I now pass. The new kingdom called that of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and known also as Yugo-Slavia (land of the South Slavs) consists of several Slav peoples now united into one kingdom under the king of Serbia. It includes several separate regions, viz., the Kingdom of Serbia, the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina detached from Turkey in 1878, and annexed by Austria in 1909, the provinces of Croa- tia and Dalmatia, till recently parts of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy, so much of the other Austrian provinces of Istria, Carniola and Carinthia as has not gone to Italy or been left to Austria, and finally the hitherto independent kingdom of Montenegro. The in- habitants of these areas all speak dialects of the South Slav language, the speeches of the peasant Croats and Serbs in the north differing from one another hardly more than the dialect of Northumberland differs from 1 The nations concerned are reputed to be already considering treaties for the protection in one another's territories of the numer- ous minorities now liable to be unfairly treated. One must hope that such arrangements may diminish the too numerous grounds of quarrel. THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 53 that of Devon. The Slovene tongue is rather more distinct, but of the same linguistic family. Another line of division between the Yugo-Slav people separ- ates the Roman Catholic Croats and Slovenes from the adherents of the Orthodox Eastern Church in Serbia and Montenegro, not to speak of the many Muslims of Bosnia. The impulse of a common desire for inde- pendence and national unity has kept these differences from proving so serious as the foreign observer had ex- pected. But they are not to be ignored; and in any cace it will be no easy matter to build up a compact state in a population which though naturally gifted, has been little trained to self-government, is unstable in temper, and at a low level of education, except on the Dalmatian coast, where Italian culture is of old standing, and in one or two of the Croatian cities. The external relations of the South Slav state with Austria ought to be and may probably be friendly now, for the frontier questions between the countries have been settled. So they may be with Hungary also, if the claims of the two states to border territories in which Magyars and Serbs dwell intermingled can be adjusted. As regards Italy, the compromise effected by the Treaty of Rapallo has removed immediate risks of conflict, but the ambiguous position of Fiume and the annoyance felt by the Slavs at the assignment to Italy of some of the cities on the mainland of Dalmatia as well as some of the Adriatic islands, furnishes grounds for future dissension. Here, however, it must be admitted that Italy had a case, for two or three of these cities had been Italized while they were ruled by Venice, and the unprotected Adriatic shores of East- 54 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ern Italy lying opposite the numerous deep inlets of the Dalmatian coast warranted Italian naval strate- gists.in requiring securities against a sudden attack by sea. There is, however, no present likelihood that Yugo-Slavia will be strong enough on land or on sea to pick a quarrel with Italy. She will have enough to do in organizing herself at home, and in trying to assimilate the diverse elements in her population. I come now to other sources of trouble that may arise between the South Slavs and their neighbors on the South and West. The Allied Powers prudently refused to divide Albania between Yugo-Slavia and Greece, leaving this interesting group of tribes, de- scendants of the ancient Illyrians whom Rome found it hard to tame, to work out their own salvation in their own way, hitherto a wild way, but likely to be softened now that the Turks are out of the way. The Skipetar tribes, as they call themselves, may con- tinue for a while to raid their neighbors and fight among themselves, but they are naturally gifted people, retaining some of the chivalric traditions of the Middle Ages, and with a patriotism which the need for de- fence against the larger peoples on their borders may keep alive. Travelling in Albania a good many years ago, I wished to cross a certain lonely region and when asked whether I could do so with a fair prospect of getting through, the answer was: "If you have a wife or sister with you, you will be safe. Otherwise your throat will be cut." On the East, Yugo-Slavia is confronted by Bulgaria, whose people, though they speak a Slavonic tongue which differs little from Serb and from Russian, are largely of Finnic slock. Descending from the middle THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 55 course of the Volga in the eighth century A. D. they adopted the tongue of the Slavs whom they conquered and with whom they became commingled, but in physi- cal structure and in character they are sharply con- trasted with the Serbs, their bodies more solid, their in- tellect less imaginative and susceptible, a people of patient industry and steady will, good fighters and able to support defeat and rise from it with a resolve to re- cover what they have lost. A rivalry accentuated by the short wars of 1885 and 1913 has unfortunately created bad relations between them and the Serbs, and become one of the factors in preventing the formation of that Confederation of the Baltic peoples, to include Serbs, Greeks and Humans as well as Bulgarians which the friends of the races liberated from the Turkish tyranny dreamt of forty years ago. Bulgaria has at present few friends, for the Rumans have taken terri- tory inhabited by a Bulgarian population in the Dob- rudsha south of the lower Danube, the Greeks have re- ceived parts of Thrace where there is a large Bulgarian element, and have occupied the seaports on the north coast of the ^Egean Sea, and the Serbs have appropri- ated a large region in Southern Macedonia, where the Bulgarian element is (as I can say from knowledge acquired in travelling through these countries) in a large majority. This was one of the grievous errors committed by the Allied Powers assembled at Paris. Disregarding the appeal of the Macedonians to the principles of nationality and self-determination which would have made Southern Macedonia autono- mous or assigned it to Bulgaria, refusing to constitute in that region a small and more or less autonomous state under the protection of the Allied Powers, or of 66 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the League of Nations, they left most of it to Serbia (which had conquered it from the Bulgarians in the war of 1913) and the rest to Greece. The Mace- donians have had to submit, but they have not re- nounced their aspirations; so one may fear trouble in this quarter as soon as a prospect of satisfying those aspirations rises over the horizon. With Greece a peaceful settlement seems more probable, and should Greek policy again be guided by the statesmanship of Venizelos or some one else imbued with his foresight, this may come about. The question of the Dobrudsha is more difficult, for the sentiments on both sides are more unfriendly, Rumania fearing the recuperative powers of Bulgaria, Bulgaria resenting Rumania's ac- tion, when, in the darkest moment of her own for- tunes, Rumanian 'troops were, although no state of war existed between the countries, sent in to occupy it. In referring to Rumania, it may be well to men- tion that she has another territorial issue to settle, viz., a controversy with Russia over part of Bessarabia, which the Rumans reasonably claim as inhabited by a population of their race and speech. This region the present Bolshevik government refuses to concede. Of Rumania's position towards Hungary, which will demand, if she sees a chance of success, the restora- tion of Magyar districts assigned by the Paris treaties to Rumania, I have already spoken. The general result of this survey of Southeastern Europe, which for many years, and especially since 1875, when an insurrection in Herzegovina sounded the first tocsin of danger, had been one of those parts of Europe in which the subterranean fires might at any moment threaten a volcanic eruption, is to THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 57 show that these fires are as hot as ever. At present Bulgaria stands isolated, but her neighbors are united only by dislike and fear of her. No State is really friendly with any other. Political federation, or even such a Customs Union and Railway Union, as might help each of them to a better development of their re- spective resources, seems still remote. We may now turn northwards to the countries which formed part of the third and largest of the three great Empires. Of Russia itself, that is to say, of the vast region from the Gulf of Finland to the Sea of Japan which obeyed the Tsars in February, 1917, and which seemed when I travelled through it in 1913, to be loyal and attached to its rulers, I will not attempt to speak. I remember going to a religious service in the city of Tomsk in Siberia on the Name Day of the heir to the Russian throne. The whole official and uni- versity population of the town was gathered in the cathedral and the service went on for three hours, dur- ing which everybody had to stand, weariness relieved only by the beautiful music, and everybody seemed to be animated not only by piety but by a religious de- votion to the Tsar and the Romanoff dynasty. Less than five years from that date, at a town in the Ural Mountains on the confines of Siberia, the Tsar and his wife and his daughters and the innocent little heir for whom the people in Tomsk had prayed, were all bar- barously murdered, and not a voice of pity, not a voice of anger was raised anywhere within the Russian em- pire. You may say that the masses were terrified, but what had become of the loyalty? How easy it is to over-rate appearances! Everybody believed that the Tsar occupied a semi-divine position in Russia, and 68 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS that the empire of the Tsar was based, and solidly based, upon that feeling of religious devotion to his person. But all vanished and even the Russian Church was not able to avert it. Russia and Siberia have not yet received any Gov- ernment recognized de jure by the civilized Powers; and there is no regular peace between them and the neighboring lands to East and West. What has Fate in store for them? Predictions would be mere guesswork. If the experience of States which have in past times lapsed into anarchy or fallen under the dominion of a group of adventurers ruling by mere force, without a shred of constitutional or moral au- thority, were to furnish any ground for a forecast, we should expect the rise of some military despotism like that of Bonaparte. But whence or when will the De- liverer appear? Three attempts have been made by Denikin, by Koltchak, by Wrangel, and have failed. Some thoughtful Russians, now in exile, look not so much for an overthrow of the Bolshevik despotism as for a gradual transformation of it into an oligarchy with the element of Communist doctrine gradually reduced until it is ultimately eliminated as con- demned by experience. The leading figure in the rul- ing group has already confessed that Communism will not work in Russia. Whoever, be it an oligarchic group or a military chief, establishes order and some sort of regular and more or less legal government, will find a country from which its best intellects have been re- moved, some by starvation, many by murder, others by exile, so the task of reconstruction will be all the more difficult, more difficult by far than was that of Bonaparte when he overthrew the Directory in 1799. Leaving Great Russia and Siberia alone for the pres- THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 59 ent (Siberia is still to be deemed a part of Russia and is ruled by the Republic of Soviets), we may con- sider the racial communities which, claiming each a nationality of its own, have tried to form themselves into States out of the ruins of the Tsarist dominion. Of these Finland had already not only a strong national feeling but a distinct language (or rather two lan- guages), Finnish and Swedish, quite unlike Russian. Having, moreover, possessed an autonomous constitu- tion, though one which the Russian Government had been seeking to destroy by constant encroachments, it was in a measure accustomed to self-government. Finland has now given itself a new and fairly well constructed constitution, and its republican govern- ment has worked normally for several years, since the suppression of the Communist agitation, which the Bolshevists had encouraged. Those who control the Republic of Soviets have, for the present, ceased to molest it. Esthonia is a small Finnish country which welcomed the opportunity of shaking itself clear of Slavonic and Bolshevized Russia, and has succeeded for three years in maintaining its independence. It has had few rela- tions with Sweden, nor has racial affinity led it to an alliance with Finland on the other side of the Gulf. Having no dynasty, nor any eminent personality fit to be turned into a king, it is now a republic struggling to produce republicans. The Letts, a small people, but intelligent and active, with the great commercial city of Riga for their capital, have set up a government in their country, which they call Latvia, and they were engaged when I last heard from a private correspondent there, in studying, with a view to imitation, the constitution of the United 60 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS States and in absorbing the writings of Walter Bagehot. So far, so good ; let us wish them all success. 1 The Lithuanians, once constituting an independent kingdom, thereafter united with Poland and ultimately swallowed up in Russia, are, like the rural Letts, a peasant people, but the sentiment of nationality which sprang up among the small educated class and had been much developed during the last half century, dis- posed them to welcome in 1917 the chance of inde- pendence; and they have been resisting the attempt made by the new Polish republic to absorb them on the ground that Lithuania was once part of a Polish kingdom. The prospects of Poland raise problems too large to be entered upon here. There are almost as many parties in Poland as there are politicians, and the com- plications of those parties, as well as of creeds and lan- guages, are so intricate and so shifting that few Western observers have been able to disentangle the threads. Poland is a country which has always engaged Ameri- can, French and British sympathies from the gallant fight it repeatedly made to recover its independence ever since that public crime, the partition of Poland, which was perpetrated by Frederick II of Prussia as the tempter of the more estimable Maria Theresa of Austria and as the accomplice of the more unscrupulous Catherine II of Russia. We all wish and hope that a Polish State will endure, but what form it will take and 1 A good deal of German culture has soaked in, so to speak, among the Letts, and the country is not too large for them to be able to know one another, and so find the persons who are best fitted to become leaders and administrators. In all countries that had pre- viously been governed by a foreign bureaucracy and had possessed no representative institutions, the discovery of men fit to administer is a serious initial difficulty. THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 61 what territories it will include are questions still wrapt in darkness. The only one of its neighbors with whom its relations have been friendly is Hungary. Though nearly connected with the Czechs by religion (for the great bulk of the Poles are Roman Catholics) and by linguistic affinities, there was recently a sharp con- troversy between the peoples over the question of Teschen, but latterly prospects of a rapprochement have appeared. Towards the Germans feeling is much more bitter. The dispute over Upper Silesia which we have been watching during the last few weeks, saw the two countries virtually in arms against one another. The position of Danzig, a German city, and the so- called "corridor," giving Poland an access to the Baltic sea at that point, furnishes another cause for future disputes. The reciprocal animosity of Russians and Poles has been conspicuous for three centuries. Two years ago the Bolshevists attacked and tried to subdue Poland, which was saved largely by the sympathy of the French Government, who sent generals to advise the Polish military staff. Since the First Partition the French friendliness towards the Poles, which had fre- quently expressed itself on the occasions when they renewed their struggle for freedom, has been recently strengthened by the belief that an independent Poland would be a check upon Germany. The principle of nationality justified the Poles trying to recover from Prussia Posen, most of which is essentially Polish. But Lithuania and the other contiguous parts of the Empire of the Tsars are not to be placed in the same category. The Poles seem to be falling into the old and fatal error of mistaking increase of territory for increase of strength. To acquire subjects who must be held down 62 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS by force and to be obliged to provide troops and fortifi- cations for widely extended frontiers is a cause of weak- ness for any State which has not swiftly growing re- sources and an overflowing population needing new lands to cultivate. A Polish republic confined to lands inhabited by the Polish race would be more powerful than the vast realm of bygone centuries whose image floats before the eyes of Polish patriots to-day. In her own interest Poland would do better to forego the attempt to regain out of mere historic sentiment the boundaries of her ancient kingdom as it stood in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Lastly we come to what is called Ukrainia, the land of the Little Russians of Kiev as distinct from the Great Russians of Moscow. Let me say that the Ukrainians are the same people that we used to call the Little Russians, and of the same race as that which we have lately been hearing called Ruthenian. These are only different names for the same people, a race which inhabits Eastern Galicia, parts of Western Rus- sia, and parts of Northeastern Hungary. Whether these Little Russians or Ukrainians are really sufficiently distinct from the Great Russians of Moscow to be fit to be constituted into an independent kingdom may well be doubted. The agitation on be- half of a separate Ukrainian nationality would seem to be rather a factitious thing which has grown up among the very small educated class. The differ- ences of language and character between these two main subdivisions of the Russian stock (for I will not trouble you with the White Russians and Red Rus- sians) are greater than is that between the men of Northern and those of Southern France, but not as THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 63 great as that between Swedes and Norwegians, or be- tween Spaniards and Portuguese. The Ukrainians or Ruthenes (of Western Russia) had been submissive and fairly contented subjects of the Tsars till there grew up among the professorial and literary class, some forty years ago, a nationalistic agitation, which in the end of the last century began to be secretly fostered by the Austrian government (probably at the instigation of the German Government) for its own political purposes, since it wished to draw this branch of the people towards its own Ruthenes in Eastern Galicia and Northeastern Hungary. The Bolsheviks seem to have stamped out for the time being these separatist aspirations, which may not have struck deep roots into the masses or to have now strength enough to keep alive an independent Ukrain- ian State, should any such be created. Between Ukrainia and Great Russia, as, indeed, between all the Baltic States I have been describing, there are no natural boundaries. The whole region from the Gulf of Finland to the Euxine is one vast open plain varied sometimes by lakes, sometimes by swamps. The courses of the rivers and rivers are scarcely ever to be deemed natural boundaries, since they unite rather than separate those who dwell on their opposite banks cannot be taken as any lines of demarcation between the races that occupy this great plain. The social and economic condition in which the new Baltic republics find themselves bears some resem- blance to that of the new Balkan States delivered within the last hundred years from Turkish rule. They are small, poor, and still imperfectly organized, while over against them will stand a huge and populous Russia, 64 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS again powerful whenever she receives a government capable of restoring a regular administration and de- veloping her immense resources. To protect themselves against aggression, and to improve their prospects of material growth, these new States ought to be united in a defensive confederation, and should resolve, if they can be induced to see their real interests, to set up no high tariffs to obstruct trade between them. The Baltic States, moreover, in case Russia should not herself enter into their federal system for they may fear her predominance if she did ought to offer to her the amplest facilities for the free use of their seaports. It must be remembered that Russia herself, once her internal troubles have subsided and she is again a military power will probably unless military arma- ments have been everywhere reduced endeavor to reconquer all the territories she has, for the mo- ment, lost, except, perhaps, Poland and Finland. The Russian exiles, survivors from the old regime who have escaped into Western Europe, make no secret of their desire to recover the Baltic lands, which had been largely Russified before 1917, and some of them long to reconquer even the territories beyond the Caucasus in which the native races had been only superficially affected by Tsarist rule. Such an attempt would raise a whole crop of new questions, capable of furnishing materials for new wars. Russia would be well advised to let the Caucasus be her southern boundary. Can any better boundary be imagined than a tremendous mountain range, some of whose summits reach eighteen thousand feet in height and with practically only one pass across it fit for wheeled vehicles? No better natural line of political THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 65 demarcation could be found in the world and it would be a great deal better for Russia to recognize this fact rather than to try, out of mere patriotic sentiment, to recover Georgia, Armenia and the Tatar regions now called Azerbaijan. As respects Europe, a Russian monarchy of one hun- dred millions of people, with the immense wealth and growing population of Siberia thrown in, would be a menace to its neighbors. Before the war it was formidable enough to alarm Germany, and would have been more than a match for any European Power had not the administrative system, military and naval as well as civil, been worm-eaten by a corruption which prevailed up to the very highest circles. Here, how- ever, the future becomes too misty for our eyes to penetrate it. Many years may pass before the moral as well as material damage wrought during the last few years can be repaired. In our time, the strength of any State towards its neighbors depends at least as much upon its internal unity as upon its army and navy. It was the habit of obedience and a sort of worship of the Tsar as a superhuman being that held Russia together till 1917. That obedience gone, that spell of reverence broken, it may take long to re- store unity and order. From war-scourged Europe I turn to Western Asia, which has seen a more horrible if not a greater slaugh- ter than even that which Europe shuddered at during these last years. The Turkish Empire and the con- fusion which its fall and that of the Russian Tsar- dom have produced over the lands which lie between the JSgean Sea and the Caspian need a somewhat full explanation, because they have been less closely fol- 66 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS lowed in America than in Europe, and they illustrate the evils to which both Interventionist and Non-Inter- ventionist policies are exposed when civilized and semi- civilized States come into relations with one another. For more than two centuries in fact, ever since its weakness became evident and irremediable the Turk- ish Monarchy has been the danger spot of the Old World. When a State is both barbarous and decrepit, insurrection is the proper remedy. The misgoverned subjects of the Sultanate ought to have risen against it, destroyed it and created new States. This did not hap- pen, because the Muslims, much as they hated the evils of their own government, hated their Christian fellow- subjects more, and because the Turkish Government was able to borrow money by which it could purchase arms and repress insurrections by massacre; while the so-called Christian Powers were so jealous of one an- other that there were always some among them willing to support the Turk rather than permit his dominions to pass to any other among themselves. Thus, though the Sultan lost in succession Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Tripoli and Crete, he still retained parts of Europe and all his Asiatic dominions till Tur- key wantonly declared war against France and Eng- land in 1914. The war between the Allies and the Turks, in which the United States had not joined, though diplomatic relations with the Turks. had been broken off, was closed, or rather was supposed to have been closed, by the Treaty of Sevres, signed in 1920, the last of those negotiated at Paris, but not yet ratified. Its provi- sions, while most unwisely leaving the Sultan to reign in Constantinople, assured to the Allied Powers a THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 67 means of control over the Bosphorus and the Darda- nelles, as being sea passages of incomparable impor- tance. Adrianople and a small land area north of Con- stantinople were given to the Turks, while the rest went to Greece to which were also allotted Smyrna and cer- tain districts along the eastern coast of the ^Egean, with the islands in that sea, except Rhodes and Cos. France received what is called a "sphere of commercial influ- ence" in Eastern, and Italy another such sphere in Western Asia Minor. The Turkish Government at Constantinople, overawed by the Allied fleets, would have accepted these provisions, but a body of rebel Turks in Asia Minor, composing the so-called Nation- alist party (the remnants of the infamous "Committee of Union and Progress," which declared war on France and England in 1914), and supported by a large force composed of ex-soldiers and irregulars, refused to sub- mit, and have rejected even those large concessions from the terms of the Treaty which the Powers offered to them at a recent conference in London. At this moment Greek and Turkish forces are fighting, both in Asia and Europe, for the districts which the Treaty of Sevres gave them, and the outcome is still doubtful. Of Syria and Eastern Cilicia, which France has ob- tained under a mandate from the Allied Powers and of Palestine, similarly assigned to England, I need not speak, for neither region constitutes a State capable of international relations. Armenia is, however, in a different position, for she is a State, though as yet only on paper. The interest which the people of the United States have taken in the fortunes of the hap- less Armenians for whom American missionaries have done so much during the last eighty years, an interest 68 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS further shown by the splendidly generous help which American charity has extended to the refugees since 1915, leads me to devote a few sentences to explain the present situation in that part of what was the Turkish Empire. Promises that the Armenians should be delivered from the yoke of their oppressors were made by France and England during the war, in which they had invited and received the aid of many Armenian volunteers, who fought bravely in both armies, and it was hoped that the United States might be induced to accept a "mandate" to supervise the administration of the country for a few years till it was able to stand alone. But when Turkey submitted after her defeat in the autumn of 1918, an armistice was hastily granted to her, which failed to provide for the immediate evacua- tion of the Armenian districts by the Turks, and the stipulations made for the disarmament of the Turkish armies were not enforced, so after some months the Turks, at first utterly disheartened, recovered their old arrogance, assuming the delays and negligence of the Allies to be due to indifference or timidity. The Turkish Nationalists in Asia, representing the Com- mittee of Union and Progress who had seized power in 1905 and carried Turkey into the war under German influence in 1914, assembled an armed force and have from their headquarters at Angora continued to defy both the Allies and the Sultan's Government, retain- ing Armenia in their military occupation, though the Treaty of Sevres provides for its constitution as an independent State to be added to that Armenian Re- public at Erivan of which I shall presently speak. Whether the Allies will succeed by diplomatic means THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 69 in compelling the evacuation of the districts, parts of the Turkish Empire before the war, allotted to Ar- menia by the award made, at the request of the Allies, by President Wilson, remains to be seen. As some travelers have passed unfavorable criticisms upon the Armenian people, it is my duty to add that the strength of character of the race has been amply proved not only by the tenacity with which they have clung to their national traditions embodied in a copious ancient literature, but by the fact that both in 1895 and in 1915 tens of thousands of Armenian men and women who could have saved their lives by embracing Islam preferred to die as martyrs for their Christian faith. Why the Turkish Government, which had in 1915 massacred a million of its Christian subjects, women and children as well as men, under circumstances of brutality and cruelty unsurpassed in the history even of the blood-stained East why that government, which had treated the British prisoners whom it cap- tured in Mesopotamia with an inhumanity which caused the death of more than half of the private sol- diers the officers would probably have suffered equally but for the intervention on their behalf of German officers why after these crimes that Government should have been treated by the Allies with such ex- traordinary lenity and should now have fresh indul- gence offered to it by proposed modifications in the Treaty of Sevres these are mysteries the explanation whereof is probably known to some of you as it is to me. But the secret is one which, as Herodotus says of some of those tales which he heard from the priests in Egypt, is too sacred for me to mention. A few words more will complete what has to be 70 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS said of the plight in which Asia has been left by the war, to which the United States was not a party. When the Empire of the Tsars collapsed a year before the overthrow of the Sultans, the native races whom Rus- sia had ruled south of the Caucasus set up three inde- pendent republics. That of Azerbaijan a region (con- quered by Russia from Persia) on the Caspian was chiefly inhabited by Mohammedan Tatars. It has now been overrun and is controlled by the Bolsheviks. Georgia, on the Black Sea, inhabited by an ancient Christian race, whose king surrendered his dominions to Russia more than a century ago, was attacked on the one side by the Nationalist Turks, on the other by the Bolsheviks, and the latter now dominate it, al- though the Allied Powers recognized it a year ago. The third republic, with Erivan for its capital, was set up by the Armenians, after the Russian revolution of 1917, and a legislature was elected by Universal Suffrage in 1919. This republic also has now been overpow- ered by Bolshevik attacks from the East, coupled with Turkish attacks from the West, and is being ground to pieces between these two millstones, though some of the Armenians still hold out in the mountains. This Armenian State had been recognized by the Allied Powers and its representative signed the Treaty of Sevres, which contemplated the addition to it of the ter- ritory to be allotted to Armenia by President Wilson's award. The future of the Armenian nation, an intelli- gent, energetic and progressive race, who constitute the chief indeed almost the only civilizing influence in Western Asia, still hangs in the balance. From day to day we do not know what is going to happen and whether the promises made by the Powers to the Ar- THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 71 menians will ever be redeemed. Among all the peoples that have suffered by the War, they have suffered most and been most cynically abandoned. The other remaining fragment of the Tsarist Em- pire (for I have already referred to Siberia) is Western Turkestan, where the Khanates of Khiva and Bokhara had been brought under Russian rule soon after the middle of last century. It has been the scene, since the break up of the Empire in 1917, of much fighting between native tribes and Bolshevik Russians or Bol- shevized natives, and authentic news of its condition seems almost unattainable. The Tatars are mostly fanatical Muslims, and the Russians few in number. Almost as uncertain are the prospects of Persia, a country long on the verge of anarchy, and the north- ern part of which was, when the war began, falling under Russian control. The brief career there of Mr. Morgan Schuster, whom President Taft selected to restore order to Persian finances, and whom the Rus- sians compelled the Shah to dismiss, is instructive, but I must not yield to the temptation to draw from it the morals it suggests. To complete this survey of the sorely plagued Old World a few words need to be said about the three Powers which in the Far East confront one another with no friendly mien. Bolshevik Russians stand armed along the Selenga and Amur rivers. The Japa- nese, who have been occupying Vladivostock, have armies facing the Bolsheviks, but apparently not at present engaged in fighting them. China has but a weak hold on Manchuria, its southern part being vir- tually controlled by Japan, which has influence hi Shan- tung also, through her command of the railway which 72 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the Germans built. In China itself the present position is unstable, for some of the provinces are practically ruled by their governors, and those of the South do not recognize the authority of Peking. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 after her war with Russia, and has a firm grip on it, though a large section of the Koreans are dis- affected. Before 1914 the Russians had extorted from China considerable rights over Western Mongolia, and when I was in Siberia in 1913 people seemed to think that these rights would be turned into a protectorate stretching as far south as the Western Himalayas. Whether the Bolsheviks will resume the policy of en- croachment and how far the Chinese Government will resist them nobody seems to know. Meantime, the Mongols are protected by the weakness of their neigh- bors. There is plenty of inflammable material in Asia as well as in Europe, but at the moment there is less immediate danger to peace in Asia than we now see nearer home. The list I have given you of the dangers which now threaten the peace of the world is a long one, and some might have been added which want of tune obliges me to omit. Long as the list is, it seems to me a duty to present the facts as those in England who have given constant attention to the subject see them, for those facts are apparently not fully known to most Americans. The war and the so-called peace which has followed the war have left the Old World in a situation which Americans need to realize, since they also are affected by it. They cannot treat the economic and financial and political disasters which have befallen the great European countries as matters that can be regarded from a distance with THE GREAT WAR AND ITS RESULTS 73 calmness or with that complacency which the ancient poet attributes to the man who from the shore sees vessels laboring in the storm. You may rather feel, as another ancient poet observes, that nobody can be un- concerned when his neighbor's house is in a blaze. In the New World as well as in the Old, all men of good will are concerned to try to bring about a better peace by removing the dangers and injustices which bode future wars. It will tax all the wisdom and self-control of the Old World Powers to do this, and I doubt whether it can be done without the help of the New World. Do not suppose me to mean that a new European war is imminent. No country is in a position to re- sume fighting this year or next year or the year after. But history has taught us that fires allowed to smolder long are likely ultimately to break out, and it will be the part of wisdom to rake out the embers and quench them with all the water that can be found. I hope to indicate in a later lecture how this may be done, and shall then endeavor to show that it is the interest as well as the duty of all nations to join in a task which involves the future of mankind. LECTURE III THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THE relations of States to one another which we have been so far considering are primarily political relations, affecting the territories of States and the po- sition which each State holds towards its neighbors as an independent community desiring to maintain its position in the world. But there are other relations also, which it is convenient to deal with separately, be- cause they are influenced by motives of a material na- ture, estimable in money, and because they affect not merely the interests of a State as a whole, but also, and often more largely, those of particular groups or classes within a State, such groups or classes having private or class interests which may not be those of the whole State, though such groups or classes may not be strong enough to influence the general policy of the State and its attitude towards other States. These interests and the influences they can exert may be con- sidered under four heads those of Production, of Commerce, of Transportation, of Finance. They are too numerous and various to be dealt with in detail. All I can do here and now is to enumerate some of special consequence, illustrating their general influence by a few conspicuous examples. 74 THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 75 Under the head of Production there will fall the de- sire of a State to acquire, either for itself as a State or for groups of its citizens, natural sources of wealth valuable for the purposes of producing wealth to be used by the citizens at home, or to be exchanged with the inhabitants of foreign countries by way of trade. Such desires may take the form of efforts to acquire the territory in which the natural sources of wealth exist, or to make arrangements with other States for obtain- ing the products of the latter on advantageous terms, possibly to the exclusion of, or disparagement of com- petition by other States. The kinds of natural wealth most coveted in earlier days were mines of the precious metals, gold and silver. Now, however, with the progress of science and the consequent development of manufacturing indus- tries, other minerals have become more important. Coal and iron come first, platinum and copper next. Copper was prized by savage peoples because, being more easily worked than iron, it was available for the making of weapons. It led Tshaka, the famous Zulu chief, to carry his murderous raids and conquests over large parts of Southeastern Africa and build up a sort of empire there a century ago. Its use for electrical in- dustries has latterly given it great importance. Nickel has acquired a special value because it is largely used in the making of plates for war vessels. Radium, the rarest of the metals, is also the most precious, and one can guess what would be the fate of any weak com- munity in which it might be discovered in abundance. Of the importance of coal we have had a striking instance in the provisions made by the Treaty of Versailles regarding the mines which exist in the 76 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Saar Valley, in the Teschen region and in Upper Silesia. The possession of rich coal fields may expose a State to the aggression of its neighbors, or may en- able it to make advantageous bargains with its neigh- bors by undertaking to supply fuel to them on favorable terms. It may be incidentally remarked that as coal, especially when found in conjunction with iron, 19 the basis of manufacturing industries, it creates a large wage-earning population, and that such a popu- lation, enjoying, especially under universal suffrage, important political power, may enter into industrial and political connections with a like wage-earning element in other countries. Such connections tend to create (as will be presently noted) a new set of rela- tions, unofficial, but possibly of international signifi- cance, between sections of peoples apart from their gov- ernments. Where a region inhabited by savage tribes or by a semi-civilized people is believed to be rich in any source of natural wealth, its possession is coveted by civilized States, and has often become a subject of strife between them. The history of tropical America since the days when Raleigh tried to capture for Eng- land the supposed gold resources of Guiana, and the history of Africa within the last half century, show how often jealousies and wars have arisen where the chief colonizing Powers, Spain, Holland, England, France and latterly Germany, Belgium and Italy also were concerned. Spitzbergen, almost the only part of the earth's surface which, because barren and unin- habited, had remained an unappropriated No Man's Land until the twentieth century, acquired value when coal-bearing strata, largely horizontal and therefore THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 77 capable of being cheaply and easily worked, were dis- covered, so for some years before 1914 rights in it were the subject of negotiations between Russia, England, Norway, Sweden, Germany and even the United States, for an American group also asserted interests in some of the mining areas. These conflicting claims have now been settled by a recognition of Norwegian sover- eignty over the islands, Norway being that part of the European continent which lies nearest to them. A remarkable illustration of the greed shown by capitalistic groups in different countries to appro- priate natural resources has recently appeared in the case of the mineral oils. The invention first of the internal combustion engine, and thereafter of aircraft, suddenly extended the use and enhanced the value of these oils and threw an apple of contention among the great States. Some important oil fields, such as those of Mexico and those of Persia, lie in regions whose inhabitants have neither the skill nor the capital nor the security for life and property that are needed to enable the natives of the country to develop them, so the foreign capitalist jumps in, a syndicate is formed, and some State standing behind the capitalist syndi- cate tries to back it up, because the Government of the foreign State wants oil for the purposes of war. Hence many complaints, many misstatements and misunderstandings, many intrigues, many efforts by means not always above suspicion to obtain the lion's share of the spoil. Thus ill-feeling may be created be- tween States because groups of private citizens seeking their private gain, and inducing their Governments to press their claims, do not care how much international ill will they may provoke. 78 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The interest every State has in turning to the fullest account its own productive power is, of course, height- ened when its industries are directed to the aim not merely of meeting the wants of its home market but to that of producing commodities to supply the needs of other countries. Thinly populated countries like Argentina and Brazil, which cannot consume all their own meat, coffee and sugar, as well as populous coun- tries like Belgium, Germany and England, which pro- duce more goods than their home consumption can absorb, have an interest in securing foreign markets for their products. This brings us to a second branch of the subject, the international relations which com- merce creates. Though the trading intercourse of States has always exerted a potent influence upon their politics, trade relations have become far more important within the last two centuries through the development of manu- factures and the cheapening and acceleration of trans- port facilities. "Aujourd'hui" to use words spoken seven years ago by M. Millerand, now President of the French Republic, "les interets economiques menent le monde." I need not therefore go back to the days when the Greeks settled themselves on the Hellespont and Bosphorus to profit by the corn trade from the maritime parts of Scythia, nor to the later days when Rome depended for food on the harvests of Egypt and North Africa, nor even to the early struggles of com- mercial Holland against Portugal and Spain. One case, however, deserves a word of mention, because it shows the power which a small number of sordidly selfish persons engaged in one particular line of business could exert upon the policy of great States, even when every THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 79 consideration of humanity was, or ought to have been, arrayed against them. The Portuguese, the Dutch and the English shipowners during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries carried hundreds of thousands of miserable negroes from Africa to the two American continents; and the Governments of their respective countries set so much store by this traffic that the safe- guarding of it for their shipowners was repeatedly stipulated for in treaties. The planter who bought the slaves when landed in Brazil or Carolina might, at least, plead that he could not cultivate his estates without African labor and could get that labor in no other way, but the wealthy men who in Europe sup- plied the ships for this abominable traffic and the statesmen who regarded it as a means of enriching their respective countries, had no such excuse to allege. Strange that selfish greed and want of thought could make civilized men calling themselves Christians ob- tuse to considerations of morality, justice, and com- passion. It took twenty years from the time when Clarkson raised his voice against the Slave Trade in England down to the day when the British Parliament passed an act for its abolition ; and twenty years more were needed before it was forbidden by law to the sub- jects of all the other European countries, Portugal coming last of all. As men's needs and tastes increase with the prog- ress of cvilization, each country becomes more de- pendent on others, and as many commodities can be produced better or more cheaply in some countries than in others, the need for an exchange of products always grows. The desire of traders in each country to have the largest possible market for their exports, 80 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and the parallel desire in each country to obtain raw materials or manufactured goods on the easiest terms, naturally lead both producers and consumers and all countries are both producers and consumers, because they must pay by their products for what they receive to be consumed to desire the maintenance of good re- lations with one another. Each profits by the exchange made with the other, and thus they work together for the common good. When a quarrel arises between two countries trading with one another, especially if it threatens war, the producers and the exporting merchants foresee a danger to their sales abroad, while consumers foresee a rise in prices or a difficulty in se- curing a due supply of whatever they have been wont to receive. Both producers and consumers have, there- fore, an interest in urging their respective governments to settle the dispute before it reaches the point at which the financial world takes alarm, stocks begin to fall, speculation in exchanges springs up. It would appear from these familiar facts that a powerful guarantee for peace is provided by international trade, so that the larger is the volume that trade attains, and the more numerous are the persons directly engaged in it, or whose welfare it affects, so much the less likely are States to seek in war a solution of their controversies. Many thinkers and statesmen have regarded this as the influence which would ultimately put an end to war by making every nation feel the losses to both the contending parties which war cannot but involve. It was this consideration that chiefly moved Richard Cobden to his advocacy of unrestricted trade. His was an enlightened mind, seeking not the advantage THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 81 of his own country in particular, but thinking of man- kind as a whole. Here, however, another influence intervenes. There are in every country persons who produce commod- ities, be they food or raw materials or manufactured goods, similar to those which, coming from foreign countries, are imported and offered for sale to their fellow-citizens hi competition with the commodities which they themselves have to sell. If these imported commodities are offered at lower prices than the prices at which the home producer can afford to sell them in his home market so as to yield a profit, they are, if of equal quality, likely to be bought in preference to the same commodities produced at home. The home pro- ducer, therefore, either loses part of the sale he would otherwise have obtained, or is obliged to lower his prices to meet the competition of the commodities coming from abroad. He complains of this as unfair, and de- mands that the unfairness should be rectified by the im- position of an import duty on the foreign products which will give his own commodities an advantage in the home market. He argues that if his fellow-citizens, the home consumers, are so lacking hi a sense of civic brotherhood, and in the patriotism which desires that all profits should be kept at home and no part go to the foreigner, such selfishness ought to be cured by law, that is, by a law placing on imports duties sufficiently high to reduce, or exclude, foreign competition. This claim made by the home producer has in most countries been listened to. It began with the em- ployers of labor who desired a tariff to ward off the competition of foreign goods, but it was also taken up 82 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS by agriculturists, who wished to see their grain or fruits similarly defended. Latterly, it has, in some countries, been reinforced by the support of the hand- workers. In Australia and New Zealand, for instance, the wage-earning class has been steadily pressing for an increase of import duties. Those colonies had in their early days found it so inconvenient to raise reve- nue for the service of the State by direct taxation, that pretty high duties were imposed upon wares im- ported from abroad. This led to the creation of manu- facturing industries hi countries where such industries were really exotics, because manufactured goods were being produced so much more cheaply in Europe that they could, even after paying the cost of a long ocean transport, have been sold in Australia at a lower price than similar goods produced there. Now, the work- men in Australia have been constantly pressing that their wages should be raised. When the courts of law which fix wages awarded, as they usually did, a rise, the manufacturers insisted that they could make no profit on their business unless the tariff on imports was also so raised as to enable them to sell their goods at a higher price than would be possible under foreign competition. This claim was allowed, and the tariff further raised. The process went on steadily; as wages rose higher and higher, the tariff was also raised in order that the employers should be enabled to pay the rising wages. The wage earners are, accordingly, now fully persuaded that their interests require very high duties to secure constant employment, and to secure it at a high rate of pay. Were the employers only interested, the high duties might possibly disappear, to be re- placed by a tariff for revenue only, for this would, of THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 83 course, benefit the wage-earner regarded as a con- sumer, but the latter thinks of himself chiefly as a producer and prefers high wages to cheaper commodi- ties. How far this happens elsewhere, I cannot say. It certainly happens in Australasia. I am here neither defending nor condemning any particular fiscal policy, but am concerned only to in- dicate the effect which high tariffs have upon interna- tional relations. These effects are twofold. In the first place, they have furnished many occasions for disputes between States. Every State that has an interest in getting the largest possible market for its products, desires to induce, or (if it has the power) to compel every other State to admit those products to its market, either free of duty or at a tariff low enough to enable them to be largely sold, while most States desire to keep their tariffs high enough to give a sub- stantial advantage to their own producers. Hence the scale of duties on imports has become a constant sub- ject of negotiations between States. When governments succeed in reaching those ar- rangements which are called Commercial Treaties, by which reciprocal abatements of import duties are con- ceded so that the producers in each country are able to count on a considerable sale in the market of the other, there is a prospect that trade between them may be- come brisk, and as the peoples get to know one another, their common advantage may induce friendliness. These treaties are usually made on the Bismarckian basis of Do ut des; I give you something to get some- thing from you. It is a "deal" wherein each nation makes some concession from its normal tariff. An il- lustrative instance occurs to me in the case of a treaty 84 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS which I had long ago to negotiate with Spain. By it Great Britain lowered her duties on certain Spanish wines in return for a lowering by Spain of her duties on certain British textile goods. I remember taking the treaty to Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prune Min- ister, and asking him whether he had any objection. He "hummed and hawed" and looked a little askance at it, but said at last that though he saw in it a slight deviation from sound fiscal principles, he would not object to it if the Foreign Office desired it, and so it was ratified. It did not, however, last very long. As usually happens in such cases, the Spanish textile manufacturers went to their Government and said that they were displeased at seeing the duty on British tex- tiles lowered, and would rather go back to the higher tariff. The Spanish Government assented, for the manufacturers could influence votes, and the treaty was after a while allowed to expire. That sort of thing frequently happens. The famous commercial treaty which Cobden negotiated with Louis Napoleon, in 1860, was made for a term of years, and then, at the instance of French industrials, was not renewed. The policy of France has latterly been to make her commercial agreements for much shorter peri- ods than was the practice of Germany. In every coun- try objections are likely to be raised by interested sec- tions and when the working of such a treaty has created discontent in either, or both, of the contracting coun- tries, each Government tries to coerce the other into giving it more favorable terms. Then ensues what is called a Tariff War, in which each State raises its tariffs higher and higher in the hope of "bluffing" the other into compliance with its own demand. There was some THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 85 time ago such a conflict between Italy and France, and another (some time before the Great War) between Russia and Germany, in which in both countries, pro- ducers as well as consumers, suffered, and the com- promise to which the contending States were ulti- mately driven did not allay the irritation which strife had created. The obstacles to trade offered by custom houses have sometimes brought about a commercial union of inde- pendent States for the purposes of the duties to be imposed on the import or export of goods. This hap- pened when the thirteen States of the North Ameri- can Confederation united in the National Government set up by the National Constitution of 1788-89. A later case was the formation of a Zollverein (literally, Tolls Union) in 1828-34 by the several kingdoms and principalities, except Austria, which constituted the then existing Germanic Confederation, a case remark- able, because it helped to lead forward to the union of all those States in the German Empire, established in 1871. This Union still subsists, though now under a republican form, hi the German realm of to-day, which continues to have a certain federal character. An opposite phenomenon is seen in the case of six countries, each of which, though all of the six are legally parts of the same monarchy and have a com- mon foreign policy, has, nevertheless, come to possess its own system of customs dues. In that union of self- governing commonwealths, which is popularly called the British Empire, Great Britain and all the five British self-governing dominions (Canada, New- foundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) have each one its own tariff, enacted by its own legis- 86 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS lature. No two have the same tariff. You will doubt- less remember that in 1911, a commercial treaty (sub- sequently disapproved by the Canadian Parliament) was negotiated between the United States and the Do- minion of Canada without the interference of Great Britain. When some years ago a group of British poli- ticians were advocating the formation of a uniform tariff for all the territories of the British Crown they were soon forced to drop the project, because it became clear that each Dominion wished to have its own tariff, even when that tariff bore hard upon articles exported from Great Britain. Each was willing to give the mother country some preference in its market, but would not consent to admit her products free of duty, or to adopt the British scale of import duties, for the manufacturers in the several Dominions, and the work- men they employed, feared the competition of British producers. One class of cases needs mention in which special reasons may induce States to set up, for reasons other than commercial, tariffs taking certain articles out of the category of those which can be dealt with on the principles usually applicable to commercial relations. When any country is so far behind in the arts of indus- trial production that its workshops cannot produce articles needed for the purposes of war, such as heavy guns or armor-plated ships, at a profit to the producer, such a nation may feel itself obliged to provide for a supply of these articles in war time by placing upon ironwares and certain other substances used hi war, duties sufficiently high to make it profitable to produce them at home. Such conditions take the case out of the operation of normal economic principles. Russia was THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 87 long in this position. She could not, owing to the back- wardness of her industries and her geographical posi- tion, afford to depend upon other countries for articles essential to her military safety, so she maintained a high tariff on those articles, and foreign firms established factories in her territory. It may, however, be main- tained that she would have done better to grant a sub- vention or bounty to the home manufacturers rather than encourage them by a tariff, for a tariff makes the goods to which it applies dearer to all purchasers, and in so doing sometimes hampers other industries by rais- ing the price of articles which they need for their own manufacturing production. In this instance, so far from free trade killing war, it was war, or rather the fear of war, that was killing free trade. There is visible in Australia, and, indeed, in some other countries, a sentiment, assuming the guise of patriotic self-reliance, that the country should be self-sufficing, able to provide herself with everything she needs which climatic con- ditions do not absolutely forbid her to produce, even if in so doing she incurs heavy economic loss. This is a strange and futile resistance to those laws of geography and natural development which have given special op- portunities to particular regions and peoples. Why grow bananas under glass in Norway if you can import them from Jamaica? Which of us would think of learning to do something badly which others can do better for us, be it playing the fiddle, or painting, or conducting a lawsuit, or mending a motor car? If you ask what has proved in fact to be the influ- ence of commercial considerations in preserving peace by making each nation unwilling to quarrel with those to whom it profitably sells and from whom it profitably 88 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS buys, two recent instances may be cited to throw light on the question instances which show how these con- siderations, on which Cobden and other eminent men who followed him have set high value, failed to have their expected effect. Russia was before 1914 one of the best markets which her great neighbor, Germany, had for manu- factured goods, and was also one of the most promis- ing fields for the employment of German capital in industrial enterprises. The prosperity and purchasing power of Russia were growing fast, so German manu- facturers had a cogent motive for desiring Russia's prosperity and for extending the very profitable trade they were driving wih her. Nevertheless, this mo- tive did not prevent the German Government from go- ing to war with Russia in 1914, a step contemplated as probable for some time previously, as was shown by the newspaper campaigns which the German and the Rus- sian newspapers carried on against one another. The action of Germany may have been due partly to a fear of Russia's material growth, which made her think it best to strike at once, partly to the confident belief that Russia, even though leagued with France, could be easily overthrown and brought into a commercial subservience which would enable German traders to dominate Russia and hold it as their exclusive pre- serve. Be this as it may, considerations of imme- diate economic loss counted for little or nothing. Even the leading German manufacturers and financiers did not try to prevent war. The other case is still more instructive. For many years before 1914 the growing commercial prosperity of Germany had made for the expansion of the trade THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 89 between her and England. Among all foreign coun- tries she was England's largest customer, and both countries were profiting immensely by this trade. Though they competed hi some kinds of goods, they were in other kinds complementary to one an- other, for English manufacturers bought from Ger- many many partly manufactured articles and after finishing them exported them to Germany as well as elsewhither. Despite the check on imports which the high German tariff imposed, the German market was extremely valuable to England, and the English mar- ket no less valuable to Germany. On the other hand, there had begun to exist in English manufacturing and mercantile circles a certain jealousy of the rapid ex- tension of German trade, whi^h was supplanting that of England in certain markets, such as those of Spanish America, the importance of which British exporters had been the first to discover. This German advance was sometimes attributed to the active support which the German Government gave to its own subjects, but it was due much more to the assiduity of German busi- ness firms and their agents in studying the require- ments of the foreign customer, and to the tireless dili- gence of their agents on the spot in mastering the languages spoken in the countries where they were employed and in pushing their goods by every means available. British travellers admitted, and could not but admire, the energy which the Germans threw into their work. This vexation at the success of their com- petitors sometimes found expression in the British press, and any such expressions were exaggerated in the German press, for there are everywhere some newspapers willing to make mischief. Yet the jealousy 90 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS aforesaid did not really chill the relations of the two peoples, for it was checked by the English sense of fair play, which recognized that hard work deserved suc- cess, and it certainly did not affect the official policy of England towards Germany, which continued to be friendly till the extension of the German navy raised apprehensions of a different nature. The many English friends of Germany, who did their best for the maintenance of peace and good-will between the nations and especially those of us who knew Germany, who had lived in Germany or had in days of youth studied in German universities, together with those who loved German literature and German music all these refused to believe that Germany could be seriously hostile to England, and also regarded the common interest that both countries had in their great and growing trade as being a valuable asset for the preservation of peace. But these cool-headed Germans had to contend in their own country against the feeling that it was unfair that so great a mercantile State as Germany had become should have possessions abroad less extensive and less worth having for busi- ness purposes than were the dominions of Britain or of France. That she had not possessions so valuable was of course due to the fact that Holland, France and Britain had begun to be exploring and colonizing Pow- ers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when there was virtually no German State, but only, under the semblance of an Empire, a congeries of petty, al- most independent, monarchies, none of them occupied with enterprise by sea. Had the Netherlands been po- litically a part of a united Germany in those two later centuries, as they were in the eleventh and twelfth THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 91 centuries, the course of history would have been en- tirely different, and half of the tropical world might have been German. However, as I have said, many persons in England, and some in Germany, believed that the reciprocal benefits which the two countries drew from their trade constituted, if not a security, yet a strong force making for peace. We in England were mistaken. See what happened hi 1914! When the decisive moment came at which the Ger- man Government had to decide whether it would by entering Belgium bring England into the war that was already breaking out against Russia and France, and when the British Government and Parliament had to decide whether they would enter the war as the oppo- nents of Germany, all these material considerations, all thought of the economic advantages which each country derived from peaceful commercial intercourse, vanished like a morning mist in the presence of those other motives which drove the nations into war, Ger- many, it would seem, confidently, England regretfully. As a dam gives way when a waterspout has filled the valley above it with a raging torrent, so that founda- tion of common material interests which counseled both to keep the peace, proved fatally insecure. Politi- cal reasons overcame all others. Among these reasons there was, probably, in the minds of many Germans the belief that a successful war would make Germany supreme hi industry and trade as well as in the arts of war, and enrich her with the colonial possessions she desired. Nevertheless, there was one famous captain of commerce, Herr Ballin, the head of the greatest shipping enterprise hi the world, the Hamburg- Ameri- 92 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS can Company, who, when he perceived that the coun- sels of peace had not prevailed, saw the approaching ruin of the vast business his energy had built up, and, like Ahithophel in the Book of Samuel when his wise counsel was not followed, put an end in despair to his own life. Such incidents move us all, even in the midst of a world catastrophe. As Virgil says: "Sunt lacrymce rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" A third set of questions that brings nations into relations affecting their commercial intercourse are those belonging to trade routes and the transport of goods along them. First, of sea routes. Every nation desires above all things free access to that highroad to everywhere, which the oldest of poets called thirty centuries ago the Wide-Wayed Sea. Russia is the only great State that has found this access through her northern ports closed during the winter by ice, and through her southern ports on the Black Sea liable to be at any time closed by the Power which holds the shores of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. She haa long sought a warm water harbor on the Atlantic, and thought of buying one from Norway. She had, before the war, got a sort of haven on the Arctic coast west of the mouth of the White Sea, but eastwards thence along the Siberian and Kamchatkan coasts there was none nearer than Vladivostock on the Sea of Japan, unsurpassed as a naval station, for the long channel of approach is eminently defensible and capable of being kept open throughout winter by an ice breaker. The desire for this warm water port had much to do with Russia's eastward march down the Amur river; and the desire for uncontrolled access to the Mediterranean was a strong motive for seeking to possess Constant!- THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 93 nople, that mistress of two seas whose position as the meeting point of Europe and Asia has given it a unique international importance. The passages of the Sound and the Greater and Lesser Belts which connect the Baltic with the Cattegat and North Sea, as also the isthmuses which are now traversed by the canals of Suez and Panama, have, as everybody knows, given rise to controversies and negotiations between mari- time powers. The claims which certain nations advanced to wide stretches of sea, culminating in Spain's assertion of a right to the whole of the Pacific Ocean and Portugal's assertion of a right to the Atlantic south of Morocco, as well as to the whole of the Indian Ocean, have long been obsolete, and it is hard to know what is meant by the phrase, "Freedom of the Seas," which has been frequently bandied about during the last few years, but never authoritatively explained, still less defined. As the seas have long been perfectly and equally free to all vessels in peace time, the phrase must appar- ently be taken to refer to the seas when they become a theater of war, on which fleets contend as armies fight on land, and on which warships destroy warships, and capture their enemies, as enemy forces are de- stroyed by infantry, cavalry and artillery. But what do the words mean as applied to the operations of naval war? What sort of "freedom" is desired on sea? Does the term mean that no nation is to be allowed to possess a navy of preeminent strength, or does it refer to the much debated right of warships to capture the trading ships of an enemy and the vessels and goods belonging to neutrals, and the goods of an enemy car- ried in neutral ships? (I pass by the right of blockad- 94 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ing enemy ports and the questions relating to contra- band, for these are different matters.) There is much to be said, on both sides, about these rights of capture, but they do not seem to have been raised in the nego- tiations that have followed the war, and they need not be discussed here, though they will doubtless be dis- cussed hereafter. There have been many controversies between States over the use for navigation of rivers dividing two States, or descending from one State into another, and treaties often contain provisions regulating the respec- tive rights of riparian States. A good example is fur- nished by the Danube, the lower navigation of which was placed by the Treaty of Paris in 1856 under the control of an International Commission, on which the States interested were represented and which worked efficiently. Some great streams are, like the Amazonas, entirely open, Brazil having very properly recognized the rights of Peru and Ecuador to have free access to the Atlantic. The recent Treaty of Versailles has dealt with the Vistula and the Oder and the Elbe and the Rhine; and Switzerland, which was not a party to that treaty, has raised points affecting her rights on the last named river. The control of the lower part of the Scheldt was a subject of constant contention between Holland, which held (and still holds) both banks, and the Power to which Antwerp belonged, so that the Emperor Joseph II said that if the Dutch would allow his ships to pass freely through from that city to India he would drop all the other grievances against the United Provinces whereof he complained. Water serves other purposes besides navigation. It THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 96 is inhabited by fish. Flowing water is not only a source of mechanical power, but can be em- ployed for irrigation. No controversies have given more trouble than those raised over fishing rights. Those recognized by the Treaty of 1783 as existing on the coasts of Newfoundland and Canada were a bone of contention between the American and British Govern- ments from 1783 to 1910, when they were finally settled by arbitration a remarkable arbitration, because it is, so far as I know, the only, or almost the only, case in history where both parties were perfectly well satisfied. A useful illustration both of the intricate questions which arise when rivers are concerned, and of the best way of settling such questions, may be found in the pe- culiar and instructive case of two streams, whose course lies partly in the Northwestern United States and partly in Western Canada, viz., the St. Mary's River and the Milk River. These two streams, the courses of which pass backwards and forwards from the United States into Canada and from Canada into the United States, are serviceable to both countries, partly for irrigation, partly for navigation, and each country could inflict inconvenience on the inhabitants of the other by asserting rights of ownership within its own territory without regard to the interests of the neigh- bor country. To prevent any such unneighborly ac- tion, and to provide for the best use of the waters for the benefit of both countries, a treaty was drafted in 1908, and finally approved in 1910, which outlined an arrangement meant to secure that common beneficial use, by "pooling" the waters of both, treating them as one common stream to be used equally for the pur- 96 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS poses of the two countries. 1 The carrying out of the scheme was entrusted to an International Commission composed of delegates from both the United States and Canada, with very wide powers of adjusting both water questions and other matters which might from time to time affect the economic relations of the two peoples. This Commission has worked well and has shown itself capable of settling controversial questions that might have given rise to ill feeling had each nation stood stiffly upon its legal rights, especially as it would (in most instances) have been hard to say what the legal rights were. The open sea is open to all, but though its shores are normally under the sole control of the State to which they belong, still inasmuch as some use of the coasts is practically indispensable to those who catch the fish in the adjoining waters, questions are apt to arise between the local fishermen and those who come from other countries, and the adjustment of these questions may become difficult, even when provisions regarding them have been inserted in treaties. As re- gards Newfoundland the respective treaty rights of the native and of the American fisherman had repeat- edly led to friction, which lasted till the arbitration of 1912. France also attached high importance to the rights hi the cod fisheries which her fishermen enjoyed under old treaties, because the fishing vessels which came to the Banks of Newfoundland every spring in 1 It is a pleasure in this connection to pay a tribute to the wisdom, tact and diplomatic skill of Mr. Elihu Root, with whom the earlier negotiations that led to the settlement of the terms of that treaty were conducted, and also to the judgment and fairness of Mr. Robert Bacon, who succeeded Mr. Root as Secretary of State and in whom America has lost, during the war, one of its most high-minded statesmen. THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 97 large numbers from Brittany and Normandy furnished the reservoir from which the French navy drew its supply of hardy mariners. 1 Another instance of a different kind will illustrate the many points that may arise where the subjects of several nations pursue their occupations in the same sea area. There was forty years ago a pernicious traf- fic in ardent spirits carried on in the North Sea by small ships which sold these drinks to the fishing boats, demoralizing their crews and increasing the dangers that belong to a stormy sea. The British Government, anxious for the welfare of its fisher folk, tried to bring about an agreement between the several States whose fishermen frequented these waters, and asked them to join in enacting a sort of police code to be enforced upon what you would call in America the "floating saloons" that did the mischief. France, Holland, Den- mark, Belgium and Norway agreed, but the German Government held out, not from any objection to tem- perance in general, but at the instance, as we were told, of a small group of distillers and liquor dealers in a few North German ports, who made large gains out of selling their poisonous stuff to the fishermen. Happening to hear that Bismarck had been asking for certain facilities for German steamers in the harbor of Hong Kong, which our colonial authorities had been refusing, I communicated, having then charge of the matter, with our Colonial authorities at Hong Kong, explaining the point to them. They consented to grant the facilities, and we then told Bismarck that if Ger- many would join in our proposed restrictions of the 1 One of the questions which arose between Britain and France was whether lobsters are included under the word "fish." 98 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS North Sea liquor trade, her steamers might have the berths they desired in the harbor of Hong Kong. This "deal" appealed to the business sense of the great Chancellor, who was never above small gains. The German steamers got what they wanted at Hong Kong, and the wished-for police rules were established for the North Sea under the authority of all the Powers con- cerned. Stepping from water to dry land, I may remind you that trunk lines of railroad serving the various countries they traverse affect economic as well as strategic interests. Railways seek not only the short- est routes and the most populous centers of industry, but are often determined in their course by the physi- cal contour of the country. Where they are obliged to traverse a mountain range they must do so at the low- est possible level, and with the fewest possible tunnels and rock cuttings. No railway crosses the Pyrenees, but five have since 1867 been made across the mam chain of the Alps. (There are indeed six, if one counts the Semmering and Karst line from Vienna to Triest.) Two of these (Gothard and Simplon) pass through Switzerland, and there was much negotiation between the four great States whose traffic was affected, while efforts were made by governments, and by the citizens of the countries concerned, to secure shares hi the com- panies that built the lines. The neutrality of the Swiss Confederation has become more important than ever from the military consequence these lines would have could belligerents use them. It is of enormous benefit to Europe that the great Transalpine railroads pass through a neutral country, and a neutral country that THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 99 showed in the recent war that she had the courage to defend her neutrality. There is also another way in which railroads have come into politics. Concessions to construct them are often sought by rival groups of capitalists in different countries, and Governments do their best to secure the concession for the group they favor. Much political pressure, as well as other inducements, were applied to China by several foreign Powers, and some of these Powers made bargains among themselves by which their respective claims to a share were appeased. Some- thing similar had happened in Turkey, where at last the great prize, the concession of an extension of the Anatolian railways across the Taurus range and the Amanus to Aleppo, Carchemish, Mosul and Bagdad was secured by Germany. The apprehensions of Rus- sia and England delayed the completion of the under- taking for some years, but their opposition was finally dropped in 1914, just before the war, 1 and the tunnels through the two mountain ranges were finished during the war, but too late to make much difference to mili- tary operations. The line was taken out of German control by the Treaty of Versailles. The recent con- struction of a railway across the Desert of Suez and Sinai, which links up Egypt to the lines running from the Mediterranean coast northwards to Damascus, Horns and Aleppo, and the long Mecca Pilgrims line constructed by Sultan Abdul Hamid from Damascus to Medina, may have no small influence on the politics as 1 Surprise has often been expressed that the advantage conceded to Germany obtained by the withdrawal of opposition to the Bagdad railway and by the very large territories yielded to her in Africa did not operate to dissuade her from entering on war at that moment. 100 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS well as the trade of all these regions. These railways made possible the existence of such a thing as the new Arab kingdom of the Hedjaz, for without it the diffi- culty of reaching Eastern Syria from Mecca would be very great. This brings us to a fourth branch of the subject, the influence of International Finance upon diplomacy. European States may be classified as the Lending Countries, France, England, Holland and Belgium, and the Borrowing Countries, the chief among which have been Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. Germany has, on the whole, followed the principle of Polonius, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." She used to spend nearly all her disposable capital either at home or in her Colonial dominions, but some was invested in Italy, and the influence it gave her there was actively, though, as it turned out, unsuccessfully, exerted to induce Italy to remain neutral in the late war. To-day almost the only country that has capital to invest is the United States, and the impoverishment of the States that were recently belligerents gives Amer- ican financial interests an influence almost without precedent in history, the exercise of which may make a great difference to the welfare of the Old World. That capital, superabundant in one country, should be lent to another which needs it for the execution of public works, such as railway building, or for the de- velopment of natural resources, such as mines, or for providing plant to work large-scale industries this is natural and legitimate. English capital went in this way at one time to America and afterwards to Argen- tina, and no political harm followed. American capital would go now to Siberia, if Siberia were delivered from Bolshevik rule, and it would give an enormous lift to THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 101 that vast country. But there are cases in which the results of the process have been unfortunate. The making to Turkey of loans which were in some cases guaranteed by the governments of West European countries gave the lenders in those countries a regret- table interest in the maintenance of a detestable tyr- anny, and the bulk of the money which the Turks ob- tained was spent upon ships and guns to be used to pro- long that tyranny, while the rest was either wasted or appropriated by Turkish Ministers. Similarly the im- mense sums borrowed by that profligate rascal, Ismail, formerly Khedive of Egypt, from West European finan- ciers were consumed in a luxury which did not benefit the country. When its revenues could no longer pay the interest on these loans, the bondholders pressed their governments to intervene. The Western Govern- ments, acting for their own and the other creditors, got the Sultan to depose Ismail, and set up what was called a Dual Financial Control, which ultimately led to a British Protectorate, and so to the severance of Egypt from Turkey, with a consequent benefit to the Egyp- tian masses. Upon the present situation in some of the Caribbean Republics, bristling with problems still unsolved, I need not dwell, for you are more familiar than I can claim to be with the events which have led to the as- sumption by the United States of a certain slight meas- ure of financial influence in Central America, as well as a control of the finances of San Domingo and Haiti. The mention of Latin American countries suggests a class of cases in which, as in Turkey, loans have in- truded themselves into politics. The dictators of some of the Republics, calling themselves Presidents, have been wont to borrow large sums in Europe, to spend LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIF< 102 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS part of such sums on paying the troops by which they kept power, and to invest the balance in France, so that when they were threatened with dethronement or tired of their unquiet life, they retired to Paris, there to spend their ill-gotten gains. Guzman Blanco of Venezuela, whom London as well as Paris used to see in the heyday of his fortunes, was an instance, and not the worst, for he was less bloodthirsty than some of his fellows. When the interest on these loans ceased to be paid, the European bondholding creditors pressed their Governments to compel payment by the dictators or their successors, which the latter were unwilling, as well as usually unable, to do, and political complica- tions naturally followed. You remember the case of Venezuela in 1903, which may prove to have been the last, for it is now generally felt that those who lend their money to an improvident or unscrupulous gov- ernment, knowing the risks, and getting high interest because the risk is great, are not entitled to ask the aid of their own governments to save them from loss in a speculation which has turned out ill. The case of the French loans to Russia shows an- other form in which financial motives can affect poli- tics. When France, after the war scare of 1875, found herself alone in the world and exposed to possible attack from a more numerous and more strongly armed neighbor nation, she began to look abroad for allies, and after a tune found one. As the Russian Govern- ment desired to obtain loans of money, the political interests of France made its Government indicate its good will towards Russia as a borrower, and French in- vestors responded, so Russia succeeded in borrow- ing from them very large sums, estimated at about five THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 103 billions of dollars in all, and that not only from the great but from small capitalists also. This gave the French creditors a concern in the welfare of Russia which drew close the relations between the two coun- tries. The revolution in Russia reduced the value of her bonds and stopped the payment of interest on them, for it led, after eight months, to the installation in power of the Bolshevik Communists, who declared themselves hostile to and sought by their propaganda to overthrow all so-called "bourgeois" Governments. But the French have not lost the hope that there may yet be established in Russia some Government which will recognize and fulfill the obligations incurred by its Tsarist predecessor, and there are Russian exiles well entitled to speak who share that hope. There is another form besides loans to Governments in which financiers acquire interests in foreign coun- tries, by obtaining from the governments of the latter grants of natural sources of wealth, or concessions for the construction of railways or harbors, or for the building of warships. As these contracts often promise large profits they are eagerly sought for, and the Gov- ernment of the State to which the would-be contractor belongs is besought to press his offer and to declare that the acceptance of it will be taken as a mark of political friendliness. In certain countries persuasion is accom- panied by material inducements intended to secure the favor of the Minister who has the contract to dispose of. Sometimes when a foreign Government lends money or influences its subjects to lend it, this is done on the condition that lucrative orders are given to the sub- jects of the lending State. In such countries as Turkey and Persia, nothing could be obtained without bribery, 104 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and the briber recouped himself by contriving to squeeze out of the contract a good deal more than the stipulated payments. When, as often happened, dis- putes arose over the fulfillment of a contract, the con- tractor's Government was expected to take up his case. It was no small part of the work of many an Embassy or Legation, and indeed the most tedious and disagree- able part, to argue these cases, and to resist the at- tempts which some Governments, such as those of the less reputable among Spanish American Republics, made to confiscate the existing rights of one foreign firm in order to have something to sell to another for- eigner. These squabbles did not often lead to a suspen- sion of diplomatic relations, but they caused irritation, and tended to prevent the best kind of foreign firms from dealing with the countries where trouble was to be expected. To what extent ought Governments to mix policy with business, and become, as it has been said, "drum- ming agents" or commercial travelers, for their citizens? Some countries have gone far in this direction. Ger- many and Belgium used to be quoted as examples, whereas the Governments of France and England were complained of by eager promoters of enterprises as not going far enough. The English Foreign Office was (in the days of which I can speak from personal knowl- edge) rather cautious and reserved, and that for three reasons. It did not wish to appear to favor any par- ticular British firm more than any other. A sense of dignity made it desire to stand apart from the pecu- niary interests its citizens were trying to push, though it recognized the duty of urging that any vested rights THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 105 they had honestly acquired should be honestly dealt with. It disliked the Bismarckian methods of letting material considerations affect the lines of general in- ternational policy, and desired its envoys to keep out of the purlieus of backstairs intrigue, which in capitals one could name resemble the dirty lanes of their meaner quarters. Some contracts were probably lost to British citizens, but the character of the nation in international relations was kept at a pretty high level. Several other States maintained the same standard. It has been frequently said of late years that in divers countries the great firms which manufacture muni- tions of war have endeavored to influence military and naval expenditure, and resorted with that purpose to a secret alarmist propaganda, or even tried, devil- ish as such a course would be, to stir up ill feeling be- tween nations, in order to induce governments to pro- pose and legislatures to appropriate large sums of money for such expenditure. This may have happened in countries which it is better not to name I have not sufficient knowledge of the facts to express an opinion but how much practical effect it may have had is another question. If the thing was ever at- tempted in England, which I doubt, I do not believe that the policy of the nation was affected by it. I am pretty certain it did not happen in America. The subject dealt with in this lecture is so large that it has been necessary to omit many facts which would have illustrated both the points already referred to, and some others of less consequence. I must now hasten on to submit concisely the general conclusions arising from a review of the whole matter. The States whose international policy has been 106 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS throughout their history most affected by commercial considerations have been the colonizing and seafaring States. Spain tried to keep all other nations from trad- ing with tropical and South America, and with her possessions in the Far East. Portugal tried to keep other nations out of the East Indies. Both countries showed a singular incapacity for making the most of their transmarine possessions, and did not in the long run gain wealth or strength by their exclusive policy. Though Spain was for a tune enriched, the revenues she drew from Mexico and Peru may have done her more harm than good. Holland managed things better, and has continued not only to hold but to profit by her pos- sessions in the East Indian archipelago. As a country living largely by trade, her home territory small and not very productive, trade ruled her policy, sometimes involving her in strife with her rivals. Commerce had not quite so much to do with French policy, but it was linked with the impulse which a restlessly active and high-spirited nation felt to explore and to acquire terri- tories in the Western Hemisphere. A like impulse led her in the last century into Africa, where, beginning with Algeria, she has now obtained vast stretches of territory, and added to them Madagascar, the greatest of African islands. It is hard to say how far the adven- turous impulse aforesaid, and how far the ambitions of her commercial classes have respectively contributed to this advance. The latter set of considerations has certainly been powerful, and it is now inducing her to spend large sums in developing her recent acquisitions in Morocco. England was more influenced by the desire for trade THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 107 than was France, but less exclusively so than Holland, because her home territory was larger and she aspired to play a greater part in European politics. Through the eighteenth century trading interests were always present to her statesmen, and how much they had to do with her wars and her treaties is too well known to need illustration. I do not attempt to justify parts of her earlier dealings with China nor some few of her later acts elsewhere, but in these instances the errors in policy which governments had committed and par- liamentary majorities had supported were condemned, and so far as possible reversed by the people when a general election enabled them to deliver their judg- ment. Germany came very late into a field the greater part of which the competing commercial countries had al- ready occupied, but she showed immense energy in making good her position. A party arose which be- lieved that her home industries had much to gain by the acquisition of colonial territories, whence she could draw raw materials and the population whereof would be a valuable market for her goods. In the latter be- lief she was probably mistaken, for generations may pass before African negroes, or Papuan aborigines, could have been sufficiently civilized to buy goods enough to repay Germany for what she had spent on public works in those countries before 1914. But the belief was the foundation on which was built that Colonial party which Bismarck, though personally cold towards it, was obliged to humor in the conduct of foreign policy; and the hope of obtaining economic control of the Asiatic territories of Turkey and devel- 108 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS oping German trade there counted for much in the ostentatious friendship with which the German Em- peror honored Abdul Hamid. Can Governments effect much for the promotion of the trading interests of their citizens? Most historians and economists would have answered this question hi the negative before the German bureaucracy had shown how greatly a constantly official encouragement given to undertakings abroad may stimulate business men to increase their efforts. Yet, much as the Ger- man government achieved, there is reason to believe that commercial classes are everywhere prone to overestimate the worth of official support. British traders used to complain that the Germans went ahead because their envoys in foreign countries were more active than were those of Britain in putting pressure on foreign governments, and French traders com- plained that foreign competitors had a like advantage over themselves in other countries. Both used to ask their Government to interfere when a foreign legisla- ture was raising import duties, though in fact all rep- resentations made by one government to another are thrown away unless some corresponding concession is offered, and a bargain made. When, as a member of the British Parliament, I was urged by my constituents and others to see that representations were addressed to the legislature of some other country deprecating the raising of its tariff on British goods, I always re- plied that such representations would do no good, and might even do harm, for they would be seized upon as confessions that the British exporter wanted to "cap- ture the home market" of the country asked to desist from a fiscal policy which domestic reasons were thought to prescribe. THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 109 Annexations of the territories inhabited by semi- civilized peoples are often advocated by commercial journals on the ground that they create a new demand for goods. "Trade," it is said, "follows the flag." This may happen if the annexing State excludes other countries from the captured territory by prohibitive tariffs ; but if, as has been stipulated for in most recent treaties between European Powers, no customs bar- riers are erected, the goods that are cheapest and best will win, whatever their country of origin. Neither do political alliances govern the course of trade between allied countries. Political reasons may (as in the case of France and Russia) draw capital to- wards the State whose armed support it is desired to win and retain, but where the matter is one of buying and selling, a French peasant would not pay more for a pound of tallow because it came from friendly Russia, nor a Russian peasant turn away from a cheap German knife because it was German. An experience of many years leads one to believe, first, that Governments accomplish less in the long run for the trading interests of their respective nations than is believed, and, secondly, that they often do harm by inducing their traders to relax their own en- ergy and lose the keenness of their initiative. The dan- gers to a state and a people, which seem almost insep- arable from the mixing of general national policy with the pecuniary interests of business firms or classes are more serious than is commonly realized. Money can exercise as much illegitimate influence in democracies as elsewhere. In some of them it can buy the press, perhaps, also, a section of the legislators. Where the standard of public virtue is fairly high, those who want to get something from a government will not attempt to 110 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS bribe, but will, to use a current expression, "try to get at the press," while also seeking to persuade influential constituents to put pressure on their member, and members to put pressure on Ministers, the object in view being represented as a public interest, whereas it is really the interest of a small group. When the standard is low, the group will approach the private secretary of a Minister, or even a Minister himself. In one European country thirty years ago a bundle of notes would be slipped under a portfolio on the Minis- ter's table, and if a foreign applicant who did not, as the Scripture says, "know the manner of the god of the land," 1 expressed surprise at the unaccountable de- lay in completing the negotiation, the Minister would rattle loose coins in a drawer till the hint was taken. These were coarse methods. Civilized business moves more delicately but not less surely. There are civilized countries in which whoever asks what can be done to guide the politicians and the press in a particular di- rection, is told to get hold of the financiers, because the press influences the Foreign Office and the finan- ciers influence the press, and both influence the poli- ticians. That wars are made by financiers is not gen- erally true, but they have a great hand in negotiations and in fixing the lines of policy, and they sometimes turn it in directions not favorable to true national in- terests. Governments must, of course, consult finan- ciers, and may often not only profit by their advice but make good use of them. A consortium of banks such as has been set up for China may prevent and I think does prevent evils which would arise if each national group intrigued for its own particular interests. There 1 Kings, ch. XVH, v. 26. THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE 111 are upright men, men valuable to a nation, in "high finance," as in other professions. You know them in America as we know them in England. They have their sphere of action necessary to the world. But wherever large transactions involving governments arise, the danger signal for watchfulness should be raised. One of your and our Puritan ancestors wrote three centuries ago a book entitled "Satan's Invisible World Revealed." Satan is always busy where there is money to be made, but the political secrets of his "Invisible World" rarely see the light. The harm the Tempter does is done not merely in beguiling individuals, but in perverting the lines of policy which national honor and interest prescribe. Every Government must de- fend the legal rights of its citizens in commercial as well as in other matters, and secure for them a fair field in the competition that has now become so keen. But the general conclusion which anyone who balances the benefits attained against the evils engendered by the methods that have been generally followed is this, that striking a balance between loss and gain, the less an ex- ecutive government has to do with business and with international finance, the better for the people. LECTURE IV FORCES AND INFLUENCES MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE HAVING examined the actual relations of European and Asiatic States to one another and indicated the chief commercial and industrial factors that affect those relations, I pass on to consider other forces and influences which, disposing States to be more or less friendly to each other, determine their attitude upon the international stagey * This enquiry resolves itself into a study of the baUses which on the one hand lead to strife, and on,the<ither maintain peace. War and peace are thertwo well-defined relations which international law recognizes, but between there has often been, and never more conspicuously than in Europe during the last twenty years, a third intermediate category of rela- tions, viz., that which includes cases where outward peace and a diplomatic intercourse apparently normal coexist with, and scarcely conceal, an attitude of suspicion which leads each State to watch its neighbors distrustfully, expecting and preparing for hostilities with one or more of them. Legally there is peace; temperamentally there is war. Such a condition of things, though it often heralds a great conflict, seldom follows one, because the belligerents are likely to be exhausted and the vanquished fear to renew the strife. Since 1919, however, the causes of strife in Europe have continued to be so numerous that even fatigue, 112 MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 113 poverty, and defeat have brought no confidence in a season of permanent repose. Exhaustion will pre- vent the belligerents of 1918 from entering on wars within the next few years, because they have not the funds that would enable preparations to be made on a great scale, but east of the River Oder and in what re- mains of the Turkish Empire all the way to the Sea of Okhotsk there is scarcely even the semblance of peace. Apart from the risk that some of the minor East European States may take up arms against others whom they think no better prepared than themselves, we must remember that a true peace does not exist where there is a wish to renew war. That is the serious feature in the present situation. Among these forces or influences that have worked for war or for peace, one which formerly played a prominent part has now almost entirely vanished with the recent fall of six European monarchies; J I mean the influence of family relationships between reigning dynasties. Everyone knows what the dynastic ambi- tions of the house of Hapsburg, Wittelsbach, Hohen- zollern, Romanoff, Bourbon, Braganza meant from the time of Charles V down to our own. A slight offered to one of these houses by the other might be enough to provoke a conflict; a marriage might lead to the settlement of a war which had caused the death of many thousands of soldiers. All these things have now passed away. The rivalries of these families did more to bring about strife than their weddings (not al- ways love matches) did to ensure peace. The war of the Spanish Succession arose because it was feared that 1 Portugal, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemberg, not to speak of the smaller principalities included in the German Empire. 114 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS a Bourbon king on the throne of Spain would threaten the European balance by adding the power of Spain to the power of France. But after the Bourbon had succeeded, Spain and France soon began to quarrel as they had quarrelled before, and the unfriendliness of the two peoples was not abated. In 1914 the fact that the Tsar Nicholas II and King George V of England were each of them cousins of the German Emperor did not delay by an hour the two declarations of war. The last trace of any real influence which attached to family ties disappeared with the death of Queen Vic- toria of England, for whom her grandson, the Emperor William, had a deep respect, treasuring everything that related to her with extraordinary veneration. Had she lived for another fifteen years, it is just possible I do not say probable but possible that a breach between Germany and England might have been avoided. - Religion, the second influence to be here noted, has lost much of its former power in international politics. No Protestant nation now cares whether it allies itself with a Roman Catholic or a Protestant nation; and the converse is almost equally true of the Roman Catholic nations. Doubtless an English King cannot espouse a Roman Catholic, while the Protestant prin- cesses of Denmark and England who intermarried with the sovereigns of Russia and Spain respectively were required to change their ecclesiastical allegiance. It is within rather than between countries that religious passions still accentuate political contests. In France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Austria there are clerical parties. In Yugo-Slavia the Orthodox popula- tions of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia stand over against the Roman Catholics of Croatia, Dalmatia and MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 115 the Slovene regions, and both differ from the Slavonic Muslims of Bosnia, who however are not numerous enough to make trouble, any more than do the Muslim Pomaks in Bulgaria who sit peacefully in the legisla- tive Sobranje of that State. It is otherwise in Asia, where fanaticism is still fierce among the Muslim peoples. Though it was not hatred of Christians that led the gang of ruffians who ruled Turkey after the dethronement of Abdul Hamid to embark on a policy of extermination, but rather the desire to have an Empire which should contain none but Islamic elements, still no condemnation of the massacres of 1915 ever came from any Mohammedan quarter. That is the significant fact. To the average Muslim unprovoked murders, though they are a sin which the pious man disapproves, are a very different thing from the killing of a True Believer. To kill an in- fidel was scarcely deemed an offense in parts of the Mo- hammedan East and it needed the severest diplomatic pressure to secure some fifteen years ago the punish- ment of some Muslim robbers who had murdered two Englishmen. So the Spaniards in the New World felt little horror at the slaughter of unoffending Indians, because they were outside the fold. Aborigines, not being Christians, seemed to have no human rights. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum 1 was said long ago by Lucretius in a very different sense, but cases like these remind us that even where it was not religion that caused the cruelties, differences of religion can prevent the natural feelings of pity and justice from restraining the ferocious impulses of man. How powerful a force Islam has been is shown by its 1 "What evils religion (or superstition) can work." 116 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS having kept alive such a detestable government as the Turkish Sultanate has been. Insurrections would long ago have overthrown it but for the fact that its Muslim subjects supported it as against their Christian fellow subjects, hating it less than they hated the idea of equality between themselves and Christians. As Islam continues to spread among the black races in the in- terior and along the East coast of Africa some have expressed the fear that it may there become a warlike and aggressive force. Apart from any such risk, its spread is to be desired, for it raises the negroes to a higher level of self-respect; and some think that it need not seriously interfere with the growth of Christianity, though it is of course very much easier to convert an idolater or a fetichist than a Muslim. 1 Racial sentiment, a third influence that has within the last century acquired a conscious force scarcely known to earlier generations, is part of what we call by the name, itself a quite modern name, of Nation- ality, and may be considered as a chief factor therein, though by no means the only factor, for we see cases in which two races, as in Belgium, or even three races, as in Switzerland, form part of a single well marked community whose members cherish a common patriot- ism. Nationality has been for the last eighty years so great a force at first for good, and latterly for evil also, that it needs a full consideration. Let us begin by regarding a Nationality as an Ag- gregate of men drawn together and linked together by certain sentiments. The chief among these are Racial sentiment and Religious sentiment, but there is also that sense of community which is created by the use of a common language, the possession of a common litera- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 117 ture, the recollection of common achievements or suf- ferings in the past, the existence of common customs and habits of thought, common ideals and aspirations. Sometimes all of these "linking sentiments" are present and hold the members of the aggregate together; some- times one or more may be absent. The more of these links that exist in any given case, the stronger is the sentiment of unity. In each case the test is not merely how many links there are, but how strong each par- ticular link is; and no two cases are quite alike. Of the various bonds of union aforesaid none is indis- pensable, not even that of a common language, as the case of Switzerland proves, nor that of a common religion, as the case of Hungary proves, nor that of a common race, as both Scotland and Switzerland prove. Often it is hard to say whether what I have called the Aggregate united by sentiment is sufficiently marked off from other parts of a nation to be deemed a nationality, as in Spain some may and some may not consider the Catalans and the Basques to be each a nationality within the greater nationality of Spain itself. This reminds me that the name of Nationality is used to cover not only a part of a Nation but also a whole Nation. The peoples of Spain, Italy and Ger- many are both Nations and Nationalities, though in the last mentioned case there are Germans outside Ger- many (such as the people of Tirol and many of the in- habitants of Danzig), who deem themselves to be mem- bers of a German nationality in its wider sense. You will see from these remarks and from the diverse instances I shall proceed to mention how hard it is to define Nationality in terms which shall be at once concise and correct, covering all the concrete cases. 118 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Nevertheless I will hazard the following definition: The Sentiment of Nationality is that feeling or group of feelings which makes an aggregate of men conscious of ties, not being wholly either political or religious, which unite them in a community which is, either actually or potentially, a Nation. That seems rather too elaborate a definition, but I think if any of you try as hard as I have tried to find a more concise form of words, you will recognize the extreme difficulty of covering all the cases that have to be included. As Horace said long ago, the practical sense of a word must be determined by usage. We must give to the terms that belong to any language the meaning in which the majority of the people who speak the language use those terms, and make the definition wide enough to cover all that such use prescribes. It might be better if there were in use terms to distinguish a Nationality which is coextensive with a Nation from one which is not coextensive, and to distinguish a Nationality which, like the Scottish, does not seek to be politically independent from a Na- tionality which, like the Lithuanian, does so desire. But no two cases are quite alike, and language, instead of trying to find special terms or names to describe each, must content itself with general terms, remembering always that things called by the same name are not necessarily the same. The definition I have suggested excludes cases where the ties are solely religious, for no one would call Roman Catholics or Presbyterians a Nationality, and those where they are purely political, for the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy, though it was tied together into a sort of nation, was not a nationality but a bundle MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 119 of jarring nationalities. So to-day Czecho-Slovakia and Yugo-Slavia are political entities whose popula- tions are not yet sufficiently united by other ties to have acquired a sentiment of intellectual or moral unity, though they may in time acquire it. And now let us pass on to concrete instances in hope of getting a grasp of this elusive conception. The Swiss people are a Nationality as well as a Nation, because they are united not only politically but also by a common pride in then- historical tradi- tions, a common literature, common political ideas and beliefs, and this although they have sprung from different races and use three or rather four lan- guages. 1 Switzerland more than any other country lives by its traditions. They are the force which keeps Switzerland united and free and great for great its people is, small as is its territory. The Scottish people are a Nationality because al- though they are not a political entity (except for some few minor purposes) and speak two languages, and spring from at least four (perhaps five) races, they are united by common traditions and their pride in those traditions, and by what is still to some extent a dis- tinctive literature as well as by distinctive religious ideas and habits. They were once a Nation, cemented out of diverse elements by the long wars against England, but are now rather to be deemed a Nation- ality. Their peculiarities have been much affected by their union with the larger English nation, yet national feeling is still strong enough to impel them in the many countries they inhabit, to celebrate their ancient glories 1 Four if we include Romansch, still spoken in the valleys of the Upper Rhine and in the Engadine. 120 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS by dining together on the day of their Patron saint, the 30th of November; and some of them seem dis- posed to consider proposals to give them a legislature and executive inside the United Kingdom. The modern Greeks are a Nation formed out of three races Hellenic, Slavonic and Albanian by a common hostility to the Turks from whose oppressions they long suffered, a common religion, and the recollections of the splendid achievements of the poets and states- men and artists of the Hellenes of antiquity. Among the Magyars, the last of the Eastern races that con- quered for itself a place in Central Europe, national feeling is rooted in the pride of a high-spirited people consolidated by frequent conflicts, at one time with the Turks, at others with the Germanic Hapsburgs. Among the Lithuanians, the Letts or Latvians, and the Esthonians nationalist sentiment is of very recent growth, and may almost be called the artificial creation of a propaganda started by the small educated class. But as each of these peoples has a racial quality of its own, and was glad to escape from the control of an alien Russian or Russo-German bureaucracy, the sense of independence is already building up a Nationality which may ripen into a Nation. In two interesting instances, Religion, associated with Race, has been almost the sole influence to create the sentiment. The Armenians could hardly have re- tained their language and their national feeling, strong as that feeling now is, but for the fact that their Church held them together. The Jews, having lost all hold upon their ancient home, had ceased to be even a Nationality and were only a religious community till the rise of the Zionist movement, based entirely MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 121 upon religion, revived the conception of a renewed national life. The phenomena which Ireland presents are extraordinarily curious, and in some aspects unique, but it would take at least two long lectures to explain those phenomena, because the explanation would im- ply a survey of Irish history from the twelfth century onwards. It is therefore safer to decline the task. An extremely interesting set of cases may be found in the States of North tropical and South America that emerged a century ago from the colossal but then dis- solving colonial Empire of Spain. Before the Wars of Independence in South and Central America, there were no nations in those countries, and only a faintly nascent sentiment of Nationality in Mexico, in Peru, and in what is now Argentina. The struggle against Spain formed the inhabitants of these wide regions into a number of independent States. By degrees some of the States grew into Nations, i.e., Organized Commun- ities with a sense of political unity, and in a still later stage they developed the other feelings which make a real National Sentiment, such as pride in their history, attachment to the memory of heroes, a type of char- acter which began very slowly to be somewhat diverse from the types that grew up in their neighbors. These feelings seem to be now strong in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, and are perhaps strongest in Chile. In the Caribbean republics, where the aboriginal Indian population is large and an appreciation of the intel- lectual elements that help to create national sentiment is confined to very small groups, the feelings aforesaid are weak. If they exist in such states as Nicaragua or Honduras, they must be in a still rudimentary stage, and generations may pass before it can be seen whether 122 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Nationalism will arise in countries whose political detachment from their neighbors is due merely to the so-called "accidents of history," and is maintained largely by jealousy of their neighbors. Teutonic North America shows only one instance of a nationality which is a member, not a Teutonic member, though fortunately a contented member, of a large nation ; I mean the French-speaking population of Canada, which remains socially as well as linguisti- cally distinct from the rest of the Nation. Central and Eastern Europe and Western Asia are full of discontented nationalities, some quite small. Their discontent has caused wars and is likely to cause others. Those that are subject to alien rule desire to shake off that rule, and either to form a new inde- pendent State, as the Georgians and Armenians desire, or to unite themselves with States composed of mem- bers of their own race, as do those Tirolese who are now ruled by Italy, and those Bulgarians who are now ruled by Serbs, and those Magyars who have been trans- ferred to Rumania. These aspirations of the East European and West Asiatic nationalities deserve our sympathy and their justice seems clearly admitted in the famous "Fourteen Points" (for they fell within the terms of that docu- ment) and by the Powers who accepted those points. Whatever may be said regarding the declarations then made, they obtained a recognition at the conclusion of the Armistice which raised hopes, many of which have not been realized. Seventy years ago, in the midst of the revolutions of 1848-49 made in Europe in the names of Liberty and Nationality, those two conceptions were indissolubly MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 123 associated in the minds of those then called Liberals, not only in England but more or less in those hopeful and freedom loving spirits all over Europe and in the United States who saw that such oppressed coun- tries as Italy, Hungary and Poland could enjoy no freedom till alien rule was expelled. It was as- sumed that every nationality when it had secured its own freedom would sympathize with every other na- tionality, and be guided in all its action by the love of freedom. This, however, did not come to pass. Hun- gary, though she forbore from seeking to annex lands not previously held by the Hungarian Crown, tried after the recovery of her own freedom to Magyarize the Slovak and Human and Serb populations which in- habited parts of her old territory. So the Poles, now- adays forgetting that the sympathy they had received and deserved in their long struggle for independence was given to them as a Nationality, have been seeking to incorporate Lithuania^ whose inhabitants are not Polish, on the ground of a former political union. Greeks and Serbs do not like to recognize the claims of the Albanians to districts in which that element pre- dominates. National sentiment has in fact become in- fected by National Vanity, which, disregarding the sentiments of others, thinks only of itself. This is the reason why that which was supposed to be a means to peace, and indeed a guarantee of peace, once the just claims of each nationality had been satisfied, has now become a source of war, a force making in some quar- ters for revolt and dissolution and in some even for aggression upon neighbors. Let us nevertheless re- member that this sentiment could not have power enough to work harm if it had not also possessed pow- 124 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS erful elements of good. Without it, freedom would not have been achieved in many a country that was suffer- ing under tyranny. Unhappily the Powers represented at Paris, for- getting the promises made to recognize the principles of Nationality and Self-Determination, have by the recent treaties left some grievances, arising out of the claims of Nationalities, unredressed and have created other grievances that did not exist before, thus sow- ing the seeds of future trouble. You will ask, Was it possible to give effect every- where to those principles? Those who know the diffi- culties will at once answer It was not possible. You could not everywhere apply the doctrines of Nation- ality and Self-De termination. Existing facts forbade the hope of success. Let us be quite clear upon that point. The promises made ought to have been fulfilled wherever it was possible to fulfill them without creating fresh troubles and worse resentments. But there were places where this could not have been done without hardship or injustice. Take, for instance, the case of strategic and so-called "Natural Boundaries." The doctrine of the strategic boundary is dangerous, be- cause easily pervertible, and it ought rarely to be ad- mitted. In England it was repudiated with the utmost energy and with complete success as was shown in the election of 1880 when Disraeli in 1878 sought to justify the Afghan war upon the ground that it was necessary to have what he called a "scientific frontier" for India. It cannot be recognized in the case of the Rhine by making that river the boundary between France and Germany all along its course, for it would if applied there injure two peoples and greatly increase the risks of war between them. But there are exceptional cases MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 125 in which much may be said for a slight departure from the principle of Self-Determination in order to estab- lish a frontier which will make for the maintenance of peace. Such a case seems to be that of the northeastern frontier of Italy for about fifty miles northward from Triest. Here Austria held before the war the westward slope of the Alps and threatened Italy from that slope north and south of the town of Gorizia (Gorz). Italy, having no defensible frontier to the west, was obliged to maintain a very large force to defend herself on that side. To allow Italy to extend her line to the water- shed of the Carnic Alps in this region promised, on the balance of considerations, to make for peace, and was a reasonable course to take even though it did involve the placing under Italy a certain, though not large, element of Slovene population. Each case must be judged on its own special circumstances. There are regions in Europe, such as the lower Da- nubian countries, such as parts of Poland and Western Russia, many parts of the Balkan peninsula, many parts of Western Asia, where populations belonging to different nationalities dwell on the same ground so inextricably intermingled that no boundary line can be drawn which would not leave villages of one nation- ality within a territory which the preponderance of an- other nationality makes it proper to allot to that other. This applies to the case of Bohemia (mentioned in Lecture II) and to much of Northern Hungary. The censure justly passed on those who made the Paris treaties is that in many cases where it was possible to do justice to national sentiment by honestly trying to cany out the principles of nationality and self- determination, they did not do what could have been and ought to have been done to draw just boundaries 126 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and to ascertain the wishes of the populations con- cerned. As I have already dealt with some of those cases, I will be content with repeating that grave errors have been committed (among others) in the cases of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and the Magyars (and especially the Szeklers) in Transylvania and Hungary, to which must be added the German-speaking popu- lation of Tirol, referred to in Lecture II. In these and other cases it is to be feared that the discontents due to a sense of injustice will injure the States to which un- willing subjects have been allotted, and will, even as the possession of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany main- tained ill feeling between France and Germany, become the source of many troubles in the future. The infractions of the rights of minorities that are already taking place in some regions (such as, for ex- ample, those which in Transylvania have been trans- ferred to Rumania) afford ground for anger and mis- trust between States and may lead to appeals to arms. Where the disparity of populations inhabiting the same areas is due to the migration of the subjects of one State into the territory of another, a further set of international disputes may arise. When Chinese or Japanese or Hindus seek to settle themselves on the Pacific coasts of America or in -Australia or South Africa, are they entitled to rights equal to those of the native inhabitants? If political rights are refused on the ground that the settlers may not be permanent residents, are they entitled to equal private civil rights, or may special restrictions be placed upon them, such as California forty years ago tried to impose on Chinese or such as Australia imposes now? If the foreign immigrant is ill-treated, as some Italian workmen MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 127 were once ill-treated in Louisiana, what compensation may the Government of the country where the offence happened be required to make? We all know the bitter feeling between nations to which instances of this nature give rise. Behind these cases stands a larger question. Has a State any right to forbid entrance to harmless for- eigners of any particular race or to make the color of their skin a ground for exclusion? Upon this subject two doctrines have been advanced. One, which found favor two generations ago, held that prima facie every human being has a natural right to migrate from any one part of the world to any other, the world being the common inheritance of mankind, and that only very special conditions can justify the exclusion of any particular race or class of men. The other doctrine is that each State is at all times free to exclude any foreigners from entering any part of its territory, and that no ground for complaint on the part of any other States arises from such exclusion, unless where a foreign State claims that its own citizens are being discrimi- nated against either in breach of treaty rights or in a way calculated to wound its national susceptibilities. Now which of these doctrines is right? The White Races have used both as each suited their convenience. The former doctrine justified the white man's con- quests in new countries which were thinly peopled by savage or backward tribes, unable to use the resources Nature provided. Such races were either subjugated, or possibly exterminated, by Spaniards, Dutch, French, English or Russians; and the title by prior occupation which any of these nations acquired was subsequently disturbed only when some stronger white State ejected 128 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the first white occupiers, as England ejected Spain from Jamaica and the United States ejected Spain from the Philippines. International law throws little light on the question except by recording instances in which disputes have arisen and the arguments then employed; but opinion has latterly tended to recognize the right of absolute exclusion by the State which owns the territory, so far at least as that right is not offensively exercised. This view has been justified in the case of some of the colored races by two practical arguments: One is that as friction cannot be prevented from arising between the colored immigrants and the whites among whom they come, it is safer they should not come at all. The other is that the growth of a mixed race produced by the union of whites and persons of color raises diffi- cult political as well as social problems. This mixed race might in some countries prove inferior to both of the parent stocks; and the troubles that have arisen in several countries suggest that it at present is safer to discourage the entrance of any large num- ber of Africans or Southeastern Asiatics into countries now inhabited by white men only. I need hardly say that both in Australasia and on the Pacific Coast of America the really operative rea- sons have been, as respects the mass of the white element, neither one nor the other argument, but a certain instinctive aversion to aliens, and the fear that the immigrants would compete for labor at a reduced rate of wages. "We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor." Prudent statesmen have usually temporized in these cases. This seemed the only course open to the British Indian authorities, who could not induce the author!- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 129 ties of British Africa to give free entrance to immi- grants from India. But the problem might become serious if any people were to persist in their policy of exclusion so far as to keep practically empty vast areas too hot to be cultivated by white labor, and into which races of another color would like to pour the overflow of their constantly increasing population. 1 There is no international authority entitled to intervene, but if the problem should ever become acute, it may have to be solved by a public opinion of the world a public opinion which does hot now. exist but which ought to exist and solved with a view to the benefit of man- kind as a whole, a thing not yet recognized as constitut- ing a paramount aim which international policy ought to recognize. The eighteenth century, which saw the virtual dis- appearance of religion as a force influencing the rela- tions of independent States to one another, saw the first beginning of another set of doctrinal influences which may tell upon those relations in a somewhat similar way. Revolutionary ideas first spread from the United States, after 1776, into France. From France they spread into other countries of Europe. To the propaganda of what used to be called Liberal or Radical ideas which was carried on by the French revolutionaries and their armies there succeeded more recently two new forms of propaganda. Anarchism has never secured ascendency in any country and it could not, if faithful to its principles, become a State, because its aim is to get rid of organized States alto- gether. An anarchist State would be a contradiction in terms. But Marxian Communists have seized the 1 This wish seems to me to have been exaggerated so far as respects the people of Japan, for they do not generally desire to settle in regions so hot as Northern Australia. 130 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Government of one great country, and are from it endeavoring to make their doctrines prevail in all other States, though they candidly confess that Russia, owing to the regrettable tendency of the peasants to cling to the individual ownership of land, is not yet in a condition to give full effect to those doctrines, just as a similar failure in popular receptivity prevented them from holding the ground under Bela Kun in Hun- gary. Whatever be the fate of this form of Com- munism which is said to have extended its activities as far as Winnipeg in the West and India in the East it is probable that speculative economic theories may hereafter play an increasingly important role and may so permeate or alarm two or three existing political parties as to tell upon the foreign policy of States. It has been thought that so-called "Laborism" or some other form of economic doctrine fervently em- braced may especially if it appears simultaneously in several countries stimulate or retard the international action of Governments. Not long ago, the Labor or- ganizations in England threatened a general strike in order to influence the attitude of the Government towards Bolshevik Russia. But the sympathy which the French Socialists felt for German Socialists in 1914 made little or no difference to the conduct of the French Government, and still less did any sympathy with French Socialism govern the action of German Socialists. Nevertheless, cooperation, open or secret, between revolutionary parties in different States, seems likely to grow and may prove a disturbing force hi the future, for it breaks up the solidarity of nations. Nearly every change that diminishes some old evil or danger brings MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 131 with it some new dangers into the field. The feeling of Nationality which had helped to overthrow despot- ism ran to excess when it incited ambitious peoples to aggression. Laborism and other forms of class senti- ment reduce the evil side of such an excess of national sentiment when they tend to divide a people into sec- tions, but in doing so fresh evils arise, for domestic dis- cords may be created or exacerbated. The passion which appears in individuals as "vanity" or "arro- gance" or "self-realization," and in nations as "self- glorification," becames pernicious in whatever channels it may flow, because it tends to ignore or override the rights of others. From considering the forces which cause ill feeling between States, it is natural to pass to those which create good feeling. What of Friendship? We are wont to personify Nations and talk of them as we do of individual men. As there is friendship between men, and as friendship prevented strife between indi- viduals even before law was sufficiently established to do so, may not the Friendship of Nations make for peace? The analogy between men and States has been present to every writer on politics since Plato. What is the Friendship of Nations? In a charming little essay on Friendship which forms the eighth and ninth books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Friend- ships are classed under three heads, those resting on Interest or Advantage, on Pleasure, and on Goodness or the love of Virtue. Where each of two men can benefit the other, common advantage will draw them together. Where each finds pleasure in the society of the other, there will be mutual kindliness. Where a man recog- 132 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS nizes greatness or goodness in another man, he will, if himself capable of seeing and loving excellence, be attracted to the person in whom he discovers it. If we apply these categories to nations, we shall find that a sense of common interest has often produced more or less of good will and at any rate of cooperation. The nations are inclined to profess friendship, and will extol one another by appropriate compliments on public oc- casions so long, but only so long, as each expects the cooperation of the other to continue. There were in the ancient world some instances of permanent friendships between independent states, i.e., of a goodwill between the individual citizens of the several communities warm enough to strengthen the alliance between their governments. Athenians and Platseans were united by such a tie, though it rested primarily on the protection which Plataea usu- ally found in this alliance with her powerful neighbor, and in the advantage which Athens drew from having a sort of outpost against Thebes in PlatsBa. So in medieval Italy the Florentines had a kind of an affec- tion for the French, and in the sixteenth century the attachment of the Scots to France, although it was mainly grounded in their common enmity to England, came to have a touch of sentiment in it. But as Aris- totle observes, a friendship based on reciprocal advan- tage comes to an end when the advantages disappear, and in the constant changes of politics this frequently happens. Alliances are unstable: the partner of to-day may be the secret or even open enemy of to-morrow. Think of the changes in the relations of the great States of Europe since 1870 how Germany was in turn the friend of Russia, of Italy and of Aus- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 133 tria, how France was unfriendly to Russia, in and for a long while after 1852, and thereafter her ally against Germany, how Englishmen used for many a year to talk of a war with Russia as inevitable. Inter- est is no sure basis for national friendship. When we come to Pleasure as a source of Friendship, the analogy between individuals and nations breaks down. The kind of enjoyment that men of congenial tastes derive from one another's society cannot exist between masses of men, while that drawn from what the poets or artists of one nation give to another is confined to an insignificant minority in the latter. There were in Germany before the late war many thousands of Germans who loved Shakespeare in fact they often said, and that truly, that whether or no they appreciated Shakespeare more, they honored him more and acted his dramas more than we did in England there were many who admired Newton and Darwin, Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, particularly Carlyle; as there were also in England those who delighted in Goethe and Beethoven and honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther. But the feelings which these per- sons had towards the country to which such men be- longed counted for nothing when peace and war hung in the balance. Admiration of intellectual or moral excellence is even less to be expected from a nation towards a na- tion. Aristotle observes, somewhat grimly, that friend- ships of Virtue are rare, because the men whose goodness can inspire affection are a very small minor- ity. Nobody ever heard of a nation whose virtues made other nations love it. Each people is much more apt to disparage the merits of others, and this habit, 134 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS odious in private life between individual men, passes uncensured when it is practised towards a foreign people, because each people likes to find grounds for believing in its own superiority. Moral merits are in point of fact hardly at all more diffused through any one nation than through another, and intellectual gifts, which are more easily recognized than moral excellence, are quite as likely to rouse jealousy and rivalry as admiration. Yet there are cases in which an excep- tionally noble figure appearing in one nation may be so honored and loved in another as to make it feel more tenderly towards the people whence that figure has come. I have spoken of Goethe and Beethoven; I might say the same of Dante and Tasso and Mazzini, but the best instances I can think of are to be seen in the affectionate reverence with which Washington and Lincoln are regarded hi Europe, and of course, espe- cially in England. Moreover, though little reliance can be placed on sentiments of friendship as influencing the political relations of States, we must also remember, and it is a comfort to remember, that national animosities sel- dom pervade a whole people unless there has been inflicted some grave injury which has created the de- sire for revenge. Though there had been a succession of wars between England and France through and after the Middle Ages, there was never any real hatred be- tween the peoples, not even among the French when the Plantagenet kings were fighting over large parts of France. Neither did the Prussian people begin to hate the French till Napoleon dealt harshly with them after the battle of Jena; nor did the French hate the Germans till 1871, when Alsace was taken away. Gen- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 135 erally speaking, whatever dislike exists among the richer and middle classes does not go far down into the masses of the nation, just as a frost, sharp on the surface of the ground, seldom chills it to a depth of more than a very few feet. It is only where a sort of fierce tribal spirit lingers, as in pme parts of South- eastern Europe and Western Asia, that one can speak of international animosities as affecting whole peoples. Even as between Christians and Muslims religious an- tagonism (where not stimulated artificially) seldom creates personal aversion. I have seen in American missionary colleges Muslims, Orthodox Greeks and Armenians studying in perfect harmony and join in singing the same hymns. Some of you may remark that there is a sense in which all civilized peoples form one great community, each part of which profits by the labors of the others, and enjoys the contributions they make to the common stock. Science, Learning, Polite Literature, Art hi all its forms, have nothing to do with national differences. Those who follow those pursuits owe as much to their fellow workers abroad as to those at home, and are, those especially who devote themselves to the sciences of nature, which have least of all to do with the quarrels of men, brought into profitable cooperation with one another. Might not these learned and scientific classes use their influence to mitigate the asperities of politics and help the peoples to better understand and appreciate one another? Influences of this kind have been from time to time discernible. Instances were seen during the Great War. Two great professions that are now powerful in all the larger and some even of the smaller countries, 136 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the officers of the Armies and the officers of the Navies, showed such phenomena. The upper ranks of the army in each country admired that country in which the army had carried nearest to perfection its peculiar science and art. The same happened as re- gards the navy. Accordingly, in nearly every country the soldiers admired and felt a certain sympathy with Germany, which had brought her army to the highest point of efficiency. Similarly, in every country and this applies to the New World in some cases as well as to the Old the naval officers gave their sympathy to England, which had led the way in naval excellence. This illustration is drawn from the sphere of actual work, but the principle applies to studies of a less practical kind. Men who have come under the in- fluence of the literature or music of another country or have studied in its great schools conceive a liking for its thought and its ways, which might enable them to interpret it in a favorable sense to their own country- men and so commend that foreign country to good will. It is a long step from war to theology, but we have heard of countries whose students of divinity had resorted chiefly to German Universities and who had brought back therefrom an admiration for German learning which tinged their political proclivities dur- ing the conflict of 1914 to 1918, making them hostile to the Entente Powers. "Tantcene animis ccelestibus irce." Apart from these cases of professional feeling, which I cite merely as instances of sympathies transcending national boundaries, not as having in any way made for peace, the most highly educated class, though it owes allegiance to truth above everything else, has MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 137 done less than might have been expected to dispel dis- trust between nations and enable the benefits of con- cord to be appreciated. As Heraclitus said long ago, "Much Knowledge does not teach Wisdom," so we see that men of science and learning may be too deeply absorbed in their own studies to take note of what is passing in the political world, or may be sometimes swept away just like others by whatever current of momentary feeling pervades their social class. Some- times again, they may, if public teachers, be under the orders of their Government, and so feel bound to sup- port its policy, be it wise or foolish, a fact which sug- gests the remark that the less there is of official control over University teachers and ministers of religion, so much the better for themselves and for their country. It is your good fortune here, as it has been ours in Eng- land and Scotland, that hardly any teachers or preach- ers have had anything whatever to gain by trying to win favors from the political powers that be. Science and learning ought to draw men of different nations to- gether into one body pursuing the same ideals, loyalty to truth and gentleness of spirit and the power of ap- preciating minds unlike our own. And it is to be hoped that the learned scientific men in the recently belligerent countries will henceforth do their best to re-create those ties which formerly bound men of learning and science together all over the civilized world. In this respect Europe has gone backwards rather than forwards since the Middle Ages. The sentiments of national rivalry and jealousy were then compara- tively feeble among the aristocracies and the burghers, and practically non-existent among the common folks, 138 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS while the Church was a potent influence in keeping the people together and in inspiring a sense of religious unity which rose above all distinctions of race and speech. Unity showed itself in institutions the action of which transcended national boundaries. Such were those General Councils in which the leading ecclesias- tics and University authorities of all Catholic countries assembled, as at Constance and Basel, at Pisa and Florence, to regulate common affairs, and put an end to schisms. Other links between peoples were found in the great religious Orders and especially those of St. Benedict, St. Dominic and St. Francis, playing in the medieval Christian commonwealth a part which may be com- pared with that of the nervous system in the human body, serving the whole of it by transmitting both perceptions and impulses to action. These Or- ders, and the Universities likewise, belonged to all countries as well as to that in which they had sprung up. Students of law went from all Europe to Bologna, students of medicine to Salerno, students of magic to Padua, students of logic and theology to Paris and Ox- ford. Many of you will recall a remarkable instance from the fourteenth century, when in a conflict that had arisen between the Germanic Emperor, Lewis IV, and the Pope, the three foremost champions of the latter were three University teachers and scholastic disputants, the Italian Marsilius of Padua, the French- man John of Jandun, and the Englishman William of Ockham. This sense of unity was unhappily lost in the storms of the Reformation, and has never been per- fectly restored. We cannot say that the sense of a Christian Com- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 139 monwealth did much to avert wars in the days of which I have been speaking, but it imposed a certain slight measure of restraint upon unscrupulous mon- archs who wished to seize a neighbor's territory at the moment when he was least prepared. It is not a mere coincidence that the age in which that sense showed signs of decay was also the age in which statesmen showed themselves most shamelessly unscrupulous. The general opinion of the thirteenth century was more shocked by Charles of Anjou's judicial murder of Conradin, son of the Emperor Conrad IV, than the opinion of the fifteenth was shocked by Cesare Borgia's treacherous murder at Sinigaglia of the men whom he had invited to meet him as friends. So too, frightful as were the assassinations and massacres which stain the annals of religious warfare in the sixteenth century, they were often perpetrated on behalf of a cause in whose triumph men, fanatics perhaps, thought the safety of souls involved. It was when religious sanc- tions had virtually disappeared in the eighteenth cen- tury and the rule of force was alone recognized, that Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia did not hesitate to destroy the national existence of Poland in order to enlarge their respective dominions. Selfish- ness, personal or national, was recognized as the natural course rulers would pursue and no authority was recognized as entitled to rebuke it. In those medieval days to which I have referred, that which one people knew of its neighbors came partly from the very few who travelled on business, partly from the monks and friars who went to and fro from one house of their Order to another. The latter were everywhere at home, and they played a useful part hi 140 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS enabling one part of each nation, and the most edu- cated part, to have some idea of what each other nation was thinking and doing. Nowadays, when communi- cations are far easier and swifter, there would seem to be ampler means by which nations may learn about one another what they need to know; and this change ought, one would think, to make for good will. Let us pause to consider some of these means. Why is it that although nations do not seem to like one another, each of us when he journeys abroad does not dislike but usually finds much to like in the in- habitants of other countries? Wherever one travels, does not one everywhere find that the people, i.e., the average men and women, country folk and townsfolk, are kindly and likeable, human beings up to the level of one's own countrymen in most social and moral respects? Their merits and virtues are not quite the same as those of our own countrymen, nor are their faults, but they have merits enough to make intercourse with them agreeable. It was my pleasant experience, when travelling in every country of Europe and many countries outside Europe, to find everywhere that there was much to like and ad- mire in the peoples of all the countries one visited. But in every country, however kindly the reception accorded to the visitor, I found that the people did not seem to like other peoples, and their nearest neighbors any better than the others. Why? Was it because the nations didn't know one another? If so, why did the absence of knowledge practically mean dislike, or at least a want of friendliness? Let us see what means they had for knowing one another. Formal and official intercourse between nations is MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 141 through their governments. Now governments may be more or less courteous in their intercourse, but on the whole they find courtesy the best policy, and prac- tice it. Yet, after all, those who represent them meet, or correspond by despatches, not to exchange expressions of regard but to discuss differences, and differences do not make for friendship. Governments are obliged, or think themselves obliged, to be sometimes pretty stiff in contending for their interests or what they think their interests. They often slip into charges and threats. Sometimes they try to "score off" one another and indulge in sarcasms better omitted. On the whole, very little friendship comes out of the inter- course of governments. Next come the politicians, the men who talk and write about politics, and whose words are published and read in other countries, sometimes with little perception of the greater or less importance of the person from whom the words proceed. We know other countries a great deal through the politicians. Now the politicians are, as far as my experience goes, always hospitable and friendly to a visitor from another country. One admires their cleverness and their good manners, and finds oneself at home among them. But it is also true that in no country do the politicians, as known by their speeches and conduct, give the best im- pression of their nation. I have never travelled in any country hi which I did not hear my private, non- political, acquaintances say, "Don't judge us by our politicians." It is not for me to attempt to explain the phenom- enon; you can do that for yourselves. Those of you who have a practical knowledge of the ins and outs 142 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS of politics have means of understanding why human nature does not wear its most engaging aspect in public life. Thirdly, there is the influence of the press. Every civilized country is, of course, known to other countries chiefly through the press, that is to say, through books and newspapers. Why has its influence made more frequently for ill-will than for friendship between peoples? Now every newspaper thinks "first, foremost and all the tune" of its circulation. Some have an honest wish not only to describe facts correctly but to inculcate views they think sound. But not many resist the temptation to say what will please their readers. Every people likes to be praised and to be told that its claims are well founded and its purposes laudable. Praise of one's country is always agreeable, but dis- praise of other countries is more welcome than praise of other countries. The praise which writers and pub- lic speakers have to bestow is generally, in the first instance, given to their own nation, and when there is a controversy between nations, any statement of facts or arguments favoring the case of the opposing nation is ill received and may be resented. There is a dis- position in human nature to take dispraise of others as in a certain sense praise to ourselves. Nothing is easier, nothing gives more pleasure to the meaner sort of minds, than to read denunciations of the folly or un- fairness of the governments or politicians or news- papers of foreign countries. Newspapers think they "score points" when they give rein to offensive crit- icism of the foreigner, while they are exceedingly chary of treading upon the toes of their own nation. These things do harm, and do harm out of all pro- MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 143 portion to the real importance of the things that are said and of the persons who say them. Attacks or sneers made recklessly and hastily in the press of one country about another sting and remain and are cited long afterwards, even when they did not in the least represent the sentiment of the nation to which the reckless scribe belonged. This seems to be especially true between the countries of Continental Europe. When I speak of "foreign countries," I do not class England and the United States in that category, for this reason: The newspapers of our respective coun- tries are not blameless, though they probably are more internationally courteous now than formerly. But we are not "foreign" to one another as France, Germany and Italy are foreign to each other. We know one an- other's ways, and we can discount what our newspapers say. You can laugh over any spiteful thing that might be said in the British press about this country, and if any such thing were ever to be said in an Ameri- can newspaper about England we likewise should dis- count it. Speaking broadly, it must be confessed that the press of all the nations taken together has done much to set them in an unlovely light to one another and said more to provoke enmity than to win friendship. In some cases newspapers have helped to make wars, and in not a few they have been used by unscrupulous statesmen to produce exasperation bringing war nearer. The press is more dangerous than the politicians, be- cause the latter can be made responsible to public opinion for the mischief they do, while the anonymous writer cannot. At present the scanty knowledge each people has of its neighbors puts each at the mercy of 144 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the press; and that is one of the reasons for trying to get the people to take more pains to understand foreign affairs. You may say that each people, since it knows that its own government, its own politicians and its own press do not represent its best temper and its highest spirit, possibly' not even its general spirit, ought to remember that the same is true of neighbor peoples. That may be a good ground for tolerant judgments of other nations; but after all, every nation cannot help being judged by those who purport to speak for it and whose voices go abroad. It will always be liable to be judged by its government, and must suffer if its gov- ernment misrepresents it. If it wishes to escape blame, let the electors turn out the government. If its politicians misrepresent it, let them be punished by its displeasure. If it feels its public opinion to be fairer and sounder than is that of government and politicians, as has not infrequently happened in England, let it see that wiser and saner opinion finds due expression in its press. To all of us, Englishmen and Americans, it is galling to see ourselves misjudged by foreigners, and exposed to an ill-will which we sometimes have not deserved. But when this happens, the fault usually lies, more or less, with ourselves. Having now seen the chief influences, non-political as well as directly political, which have hitherto worked for amity or enmity between nations, let us try to sum up the chief causes of war in modern times. First. There is still, as there was two thousand years ago, the lust for territory, arising sometimes from a belief that the larger a State's area, the greater is likely MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 145 to be its military power and general prosperity. This passion, once strong in monarchs, can infect peoples, even the freest and the most enlightened. The old, unreasoning, violent impulses to self-assertion and aggression may blaze up as hotly in popularly governed nations as they did in savage tribes. The desire that many a nation feels to see more and more of the world's surface colored on the world's map as its own is still potent, so when any territory has been temporarily occupied, many voices will cry out that the Flag must never be lowered where it has once been hoisted! or that a "scientific frontier" or a "natural boundary" must be obtained. A nation that holds the coast will say that it ought to have the "hinterland"; a nation that dwells some way from the sea will insist that it must have an outlet and ports to develop its commerce. Any pretext will do; the protection of a native race, a large share in some natural product needed for war- fare, a blessing to be conferred upon the world by the diffusion of a higher type of civilization. Second. Religious hatred, potent in the East, not quite extinct in some parts of Europe. Third. Injuries inflicted on the citizens of one State by the Government or citizens of another. These, when not redressed, have often brought nations to the edge of war and sometimes pushed them over; but the estab- lishment of Courts of Arbitration now goes some way to supply a safeguard. Fourth. Commercial or financial interests. These do not so often directly cause a resort to arms, but they create ill feeling and distrust which make any passing incident sufficient to evoke complaints or threats. Fifth. Sympathy with those who are oppressed by 146 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS an alien Government, especially if the sufferers belong to a kindred race, is a more creditable motive for hos- tilities than the others I have mentioned, yet has some- times been used as a pretext for war when justice might have been otherwise attained. Sixth. There are wars due to fear. A nation which sees its neighbor or neighbors growing in mili- tary strength, and finds reason to mistrust their pur- poses, is tempted to anticipate the dreaded attack by itself attacking. Wars thus arising are sometimes de- scribed as Preventive. Bismarck, when he was once accused of planning a war of this kind, replied that he condemned any such war because it might be needless. "None of us," he said, "can look into the cards which are held by Providence." Nevertheless, the fear of a sudden onslaught has continued to throw Governments and peoples into suspicions and anxieties which itself tends to bring war about. It was this nervousness, this tremulous apprehension, that led the greater European States to increase from year to year their naval and military armaments till these had in 1914 gone so far that there were persons who seemed to wish for war in the hope that the decision war would bring must put an end to costly preparations for it and to the crushing burdens those preparations entailed. The price has been paid and the result desired has not been attained. The enquiry which has occupied us has so far shown that international relations have from the earliest times been constantly interrupted by war and always troubled by the fear of it; and we have seen that now, when it is conducted on a vaster scale than ever before, the danger of its recurrence has not diminished. Let MAKING FOR WAR OR PEACE 147 us now pass from a survey of the past to consider what are the agencies and what the machinery by which in- ternational relations may be so improved as to create solid hopes for peace in the future. LECTURE V. DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW. DIPLOMACY, considered as the science or art, al- though it is rather the latter than the former, of con- ducting the intercourse of independent political com- munities, is a comparatively new thing, dating only from the seventeenth century, when the greater Euro- pean states began to keep permanently resident envoys in one another's capitals and the management of foreign relations slipped from the hands of monarchs, or their temporary favorites, into those of ministers whom the king trusted and employed, then becoming an im- portant function of government. It was the increasing volume of work to be done and the increasing compli- cation of the issues to be dealt with that made these developments necessary. A still greater change came with the invention of the electric telegraph, for when the minister in his office at home could at any moment obtain information from or send instructions to the en- voy abroad, the discretion of the latter was narrowed and the labors of the minister were increased. Envoys were for a long time not only chosen by the king, but regarded as his personal servants, whom he accredited to his brother monarchs and who were entitled to re- spect because they directly represented him, so that an injury done to one of them was deemed an insult to his sovereign. 148 DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 149 In France and England nobles were usually selected as envoys, but the Spaniards frequently employed friars, who had three special qualifications. They trav- elled and lived cheaply, whereas a lay ambassador was expected to maintain great state at a great cost. They were better educated than most nobles, and they were not so likely, when living in the country to which they were sent, to fall under local social influences, and especially those which feminine charms might exert. English kings partly, perhaps, for this last mentioned reason sometimes employed bishops, two of whom are remembered as exceptionally successful. As it was the envoy's business to win the favor of the sovereign to whom he might be accredited and to make as many friends as possible among his entourage, a man was selected quite as much in respect of courtly gifts as of intellectual attainments. Now, however, diplomacy has in nearly every country become a profession, and in England, and, I believe, in France and Germany also, admission to it is by competitive examination. This plan, with some obvious advantages, has the dis- advantage of tending to form a professional way of looking at and dealing with things which may narrow a man's outlook, and dispose him to lay too much stress upon usages and technicalities. In England the For- eign Office at home and the diplomatic profession abroad are now considered one service, but neither there nor elsewhere are the most important posts con- fined to persons who have passed through it. There are other countries in which a man may be taken out of ordinary civil life and suddenly sent to fill a mission of high importance at a foreign capital. The lack of previous special experience need not pre- 150 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS vent such a man from succeeding if he has native tact, judgment and the power of inspiring confidence. No better example could be cited than that of the late Dr. James B. Angell, formerly president of the University of Michigan, who was the best ambassador any Power had during many years sent to the exceptionally diffi- cult post of Constantinople, unless I except the British Sir William White, who possessed the special advan- tage of a life-long knowledge of the East. Cases like President AngelFs and that of Mr. John Hay, to which many more might be added, show that professional experience and special knowledge are less essential than is commonly believed. The qualities which are most needed in an envoy, besides a quick shrewdness and an aptitude for grasping all the facts of every case, are on the one hand a cour- tesy which, giving to the other party no excuse for rudeness or threats, candidly recognizes whatever strength his case may possess, and on the other hand a firmness which always, to use a popular ex- pression, "keeps up his own end of the stick," never permitting any imputation on his own country to pass unchallenged. I remember how one of our ablest statesmen, who had gone on a special mission to Russia some fifty years ago, told me that in a private con- versation with the Tsar Alexander II, the latter, usu- ally a kindly and reasonable man, once made some unfriendly comments on the action of the British Gov- ernment. The British envoy replied : "My duty to my sovereign and my country requires me to tell Your Imperial Majesty that I cannot for a moment admit the justice of the observations that have fallen from DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 151 you. They do not seem to me to be warranted by the facts." In the days when kings were to a great extent their own ministers, it was of course necessary that those accredited to them should possess a keen insight into character, because every negotiation might turn upon the temper, the foibles, the mental tendencies of the sovereign. This gift is hardly less necessary in dealing with a modern Minister than it was in the old days with a monarch like the Emperor Charles V or Louis XIV of France. Each has his idiosyncrasies, his fixed ideas, his prejudices, his likings or aversions. He may be open-minded, genial, trustworthy, so that in dealing with him you can put your cards on the table. He may be suspicious, or niggling, or wily, needing to be contin- ually watched. Invaluable, therefore, is the habit of closely observing every feature of character, every indi- cation of the purposes which he cherishes but may not wish to avow. In some men this habit is in- stinctive: to others it comes only by experience or never comes at all. There is, of course, a sense in which large general causes determine the march of human affairs, yet and this is a thing which is apt to be forgotten by those who look only to general causes the proclivities and ways of thinking, the honesty or dishonesty, the selfishness or public spirit, the irritabil- ity or rashness or overcaution of individual men hold- ing important posts make more difference in the course of events than the ordinary citizen or sometimes even the historian understands. I remember an anecdote which illustrates the way in which a man may use opportunities and try to read 152 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the character or to obtain an obvious advantage when dealing with a Foreign Minister. I do not vouch for the truth of the story, but tell it as I heard it in Berlin. One of the admirers of Prince Bismarck had presented to him as a gift a large and powerful dog. It was, I think, a wolfhound, or something between a wolfhound and a mastiff; a big animal of formidable appearance. It had a habit of growling and sometimes even of snapping when it found reason to suspect that anyone displeased its master. Bismarck frequently kept this dog, which was known in Berlin as the Reichshund, the "Hound of the Empire," by his side when he re- ceived foreign ambassadors. The story went that the dog would now and then growl and show its teeth in a threatening way at the foreign ambassador, who was seated hard by, not far from the creature's fangs. Bismarck seemed to relish the uneasiness which the ambassador could not help showing at the behavior of the dog, and he derived from his visitor's embarrass- ment an advantage in his negotiations similar to that which is, I believe, sought in the game of baseball by the practice of what you call "rattling the pitcher." The duties of a diplomatic envoy in quiet times con- sist chiefly in the adjustment of comparatively petty questions relating to business matters, and especially to favors asked or grievances complained of by the citizens of the country he represents, with the trans- mission of similar requests or complaints made by the government to which he is accredited on behalf of its own citizens. Such time as remains over from current business of this kind is usefully devoted to following the politics of the country in which he resides and re- porting to his own government on passing events and DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 153 the movements of public opinion. In this respect the functions of envoys have undergone great changes in recent tunes. It is not with sovereigns and courts that envoys are today chiefly concerned ; more important is it that they should observe and study the wider circles of politicians who sit in legislatures and of journalists who address and profess to represent public sentiment. The British traveller, who fifty years ago in vacation journeys through Europe used to pay his respects to the ambassadors and ministers of those days, was often sur- prised at the slender knowledge they seemed to possess of political parties and of popular feeling in the coun- tries where they resided. Nowadays these are the things an envoy most needs to regard. He ought to have his eyes everywhere and on everything. The accounts he transmits to his government at home may be of great service to them in explaining the situation they have to deal with, in pointing out to what extent words may be discounted which have been said publicly for the purpose of producing political effect, and also in the way of explaining unavowed motives, of indi- cating hidden dangers. The things which his Foreign, Office at home cannot be expected to understand, and particularly the ebbs and flows of popular sentiment, are the things he must carefully report and explain. So far as his own direct action is concerned, his aim will be not merely to straighten out difficulties, but to prevent differences from passing into disputes. It is always better to keep controversies from arising than to be driven to argue and settle them, probably by com- promise, after they have begun to be troublesome. The maxims that have been laid down for the con- duct of diplomatists are practically those which any 164 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS man of experience in any business or profession would lay down for the conduct of life. They may best be gathered from the biographies of such men as Met- ternich, Bismarck, Cavour, Lord Lyons, Lord Dufferin, Lord Granville, and Charles Francis Adams, the elder. Busch's volumes on Bismarck are entertaining, and of some political value, but a much better insight into modern diplomatic questions and methods is to be found in the two volumes of Bismarck's "Recol- lections" which he dictated in his old age. It is a book full of weighty thought which shows you what the diplomacy of Europe used to be thirty years ago how crafty, how cynical, in a sense how unscrupulous. The book ought to be weighed and pondered by everybody who desires to understand the history of Europe in Bismarck's day. Bismarck was more successful but not more unscrupulous than most of his contemporaries, and certainly not more so than Louis Napoleon and the Austrians whose diplomatists Prussia outwitted. The question that used to be most often canvassed by our predecessors relates to the obligation of an envoy to speak or to conceal the truth. It was sup- posed three centuries ago that the chief duty of diplo- matists was to deceive, and so a tradition arose that diplomatists are not believed, because, however honest they may personally be, their profession in- volves deception. Sir Henry Wotton, long British envoy at Venice, got into trouble for having written in the album of a friend in a jest that was taken for earnest, that an Ambassador was "an honest man sent to lie abroad 1 for the good of his country." Bis- 1 The word "lie" was commonly used then as equivalent to "re- side." DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 155 marck is reported to have said that it was his practice to speak the truth because he knew people would not believe him. Bonaparte said of a statesman of his day: "He lies too much. It is necessary to lie some- times, but not always." In the mouths of the envoys of some countries false- hood is so much a matter of course that it excites neither surprise nor reprobation. I remember that when I was Under Secretary at the British Foreign Office in 1886 the Turkish ambassador, who was him- self a man of exceptional ability, called on me one day to express the earnest desire and settled purpose of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, to do everything he could to promote the welfare of his Christian subjects, and grant the fullest protection to them. These admirable sentiments were delivered by the ambassador with the utmost gravity and an air of perfect conviction. Cour- tesy required that I should listen to him with equal gravity, but what he said was of course just what had been said dozens of times before by Turkish ambas- sadors and had always been belied by Turkish conduct. The little comedy was being played again as it had been played so often before. The ambassador knew that I knew he was playing it, and he knew also that I knew that he knew that I knew it. But that made no difference, and doubtless the solemn farce went on from time to time as long as Abdul Hamid reigned, when- ever a new Turkish envoy came to London. It is of course not always possible to say all that one might like to say, and some illustrious men have on occasion deviated a little, or more than a little, from veracity. Cavour when dealing with Louis Napoleon gave expression to much less than he thought; but then 156 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Cavour knew the kind of trickster he had to handle. The relations of states being what they are, no Euro- pean or Asiatic government I hope it may be better in the Western Hemisphere can tell the world all it is doing or means to do. But on the whole, in the long run, even if one looks at the matter not from the ethical but solely from the business point of view, more is lost than gained by deceit. A temporary advantage may be won, but confidence is destroyed so soon as the truth comes out (which it generally does), and the men- dacious government is thereafter mistrusted even when it is not lying. Someone has said that nothing is more useless than a general maxim, because it is dangerous to apply it without a careful study of the circumstances of each particular case. Nevertheless such maxims have a value in embodying a principle from which the exami- nation of the particular case may begin. They are signs set up to call attention to possible dangers, useful because they make one stop to reflect and consider how far the maxim is applicable in the particular circum- stances that are present. I have culled from the biog- raphies of some eminent men, and I recall from the words of others, certain dicta which, while generally applicable to the conduct of life, may be deemed to have special bearing on a diplomatist's work: Never make secrets out of non-essential things. When frankness is safe, be frank. The diplomatist who is too obviously reserved, or as the French say "boutonne" (buttoned up), loses the chance of hear- ing what others might be willing to tell. Needless secrecy is usually a mark of timidity. Never make superfluous admissions nor say more DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 157 than is needed to explain or justify your government's course or your own. It was a maxim of Napoleon's never to reverse a policy nor admit a defeat. He who goes to another country to represent his own, goes to represent his country as a whole and not any party in it, and should put aside all his former political affiliations. An envoy should never show any predilection for any political party in the country he goes to, nor ex- press an opinion on its political issues. Having known more than a generation of American ambassadors in England, I have admired the discretion which they have always shown hi that respect, and can remember no one who said anything in public from which it could be gathered whether he sympathized with Liberals or with Conservatives. Neither should the envoy ever fall, or let it be supposed that he has fallen, under the influence of any person or group in the country where his service lies. It has been said of Napoleon that he never lost his temper unless he meant to lose it. To be, or to seem, exasperated may possibly, though rarely, be justified if it becomes necessary for an envoy to show that his gov- ernment will stand no nonsense. This advantage is claimed for the method, that while your adversary is discomposed, the man who seems to be losing his tem- per really remains cool. In negotiations, bluffing is a dangerous practice to which no envoy should resort except by the express instructions of his own government. They ought to know better than he can whether they "hold the cards." Before entering on an important interview reflect on 158 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the course it is likely to take, so as to be prepared as far as possible for your adversary's arguments. Napoleon's success in war was largely due to his habit of thinking out beforehand all possible eventualities. Resist the temptation to satirical criticisms. It is said that Frederick the Great brought on a war with Russia by an imprudent sarcasm on the Empress Anne. The envoy should never, except under positive in- structions from home, make a public statement of policy to anyone except the government to which he is accredited. To do so on a public occasion may give an opening to politicians or the press to misrepresent or misconceive his own or his government's views, and he must never get involved in a press controversy. Always look ahead. The party "whip" thinks of the day, or the next day, when the critical division will arrive; the journalist thinks of the next two or three days; the party politicians think of the month, or, at furthest, of the next election. But the diplomatist and his Foreign Office ought to think of the developments still further off, which are still hidden from most jour- nalists and party politicians. You have all heard of the advice given by an old Minister to a young man charged with a delicate ne- gotiation: "Above all, no zeal." People betray them- selves by eagerness. An astute adversary knows how to draw advantage from every indication of the rela- tive importance which the other negotiator attaches to particular points. As I have referred to the press, it may be said that it presents one of the modern diplomatist's most deli- cate problems. A diplomatist needs in every country to be specially careful to avoid any trouble that may DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 159 arise through statements made by him that are liable to be misunderstood or misrepresented. Everything depends upon the particular press-man he may have to deal with. If he is a person of honor and judg- ment, it may be well worth while to give him private information which may enable him to correct, or contradict, misleading statements. In America and in England one can soon discover the newspaper cor- respondents who deserve confidence. It is easier to say what an envoy may not do in the way of seeking private information or exerting private influence than to define what he may do, for the rules of international law are not altogether explicit and the practice not well settled. There have been govern- ments which asked, and sometimes received, from their envoys services no self-respecting man ought to render, such as bribing persons to steal documents. It would be better for such envoys to refuse and resign. You may ask what is in our time the real value of diplomacy that is to say, what difference does the action and personality of diplomatic envoys make to the relations of states. Much, no doubt, depends on the country and on the government with which an envoy has to deal. A different sort of man is needed in Constantinople, in Teheran, in Madrid, in Stockholm. Broadly speaking, however, and thinking of civilized and well ordered countries, the answer will probably be that an ambassador is less important now than for- merly, because, since he is at the end of a telegraph wire, much less is left to his discretion. Every impor- tant decision rests with his government, which can from hour to hour instruct him, and which he can from hour to hour consult. Perhaps his chief use is to 160 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS inform and advise them, a purpose for which gifts are needed different from those commonly thought of in connection with the office. Sympathy must not over- ride detachment, nor detachment chill sympathy. It is not only in an ambassador that both detachment and sympathy are valuable, but also in an administrator of a colony or dependent country, such as was Lord Cromer in Egypt, such as are your governors in the Philippine Islands. There is here for such a man a field also for resource- fulness and inventiveness. An envoy is brought right up against the difficulties that have to be faced and overcome in order to create a good understanding be- tween states. He knows the statesmen of the country where he resides better than his chiefs at home know them. He can take their measure and tell what they are after. Mr. Root has truly said that every contro- versy between states can be settled where there is a will on both sides to settle them. It is an envoy's business to discover whether the minister he deals with is "play- ing politics" or "sparring for position," or whether he really wishes to settle a controversy. It is moreover his duty to watch and comprehend the public opinion of the nation among whom he resides and to explain it to his own government. Expedients for settling disputes may occur to him which his own Foreign Office may not have thought of. Being on the spot, he can see things his government does not see, can make sugges- tions and propound solutions, and if his government trusts his judgment, great may be his opportunities for doing good. From diplomacy as the art by which international relations are handled we may pass to International DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 161 Law as comprising the rules, so far as they have been formulated, to which those relations ought to conform and by which they may, when disturbed, be adjusted. It is a part of the machinery which exists for keep- ing the peace of the world, since it embodies prin- ciples by which states have agreed to be guided principles which, as being generally applicable to all states, all may without loss of dignity accept and obey. Are these rules fit to be called Law? There has been much controversy on this point between different schools of jurists, some of whom have argued that inter- national rules do not deserve to be called Law at all. Some of these lawyers, or speculative thinkers, empha- sizing an obvious fact as if it were their own discovery, have proclaimed from the housetops that inasmuch as within each State nothing is recognized as Law except that which the supreme authority in the State has enacted or is prepared to enforce, international rules cannot be law because there is outside and above the several independent States no supreme international authority either to enact or to enforce rules binding upon those States. As I sought to show in the first of these lectures, independent political communities are in what is called a State of Nature towards one another. There is no power above them that can make law for them or enforce law upon them. The school I have referred to accordingly insists that there can be no such thing as international law becaue there is no authority entitled to issue and enforce commands upon all States. It is obvious that whoever sits down to construct a definition declaring nothing to be Law except that 162 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS which a State commands, can rule out anything that does not conform to his own definition. It is plain enough that what has been called international law does not belong to the same category as the statutes of England or Massachusetts. International rules do not proceed from an authority legally recognized by all nations as possessing not only the right to declare the rule but also both the duty and the power to com- pel obedience to it. But the view which restricts the term Law to a command proceeding from the State and enforced by the State is not historically defensible and may even be misleading, for there have been rules generally obeyed which rested on custom only, but a custom which everybody recognized, having the weight of long practice and of public opinion behind it. Rules may be obeyed not only when they proceed from State authority, but when they have the force of habit be- hind them, and from fear of the consequences which disobedience may involve. A rule supported by public opinion and the breach of which exposes the offender to a legal or practical outlawry, may be strong enough to have the practical effect of Law. There is a very curious instance of that in the laws of the primitive republic of Iceland. In Iceland there was no State, but a number of virtually independent communities, and these communities had a great number of rules which they all recognized as having the authority of settled custom. The whole body of Icelanders which consisted of these communi- ties accepted the customs as binding. Once a year a popular assembly, called the Althing, was convoked at which it was the duty of a high official, chosen in re- spect of his legal learning, to repeat publicly from mem- DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 163 ory these rules from beginning to end to the intent that all might know them. When an offense was committed the person wronged could bring a lawsuit in the courts against the offender. If the offender appeared the case was heard, and if the decision went against him he was bound to obey and pay whatever fine was imposed. If he did not appear, or if, when the case had been heard and had gone against him, he disobeyed the decree, there was only one penalty that could be enforced. There was no State authority with the power of enforc- ing the decree, but the offender was deemed to have put himself outside the community, and the penalty was that anybody might kill him because he had been declared an outlaw, and if anybody killed him his rela- tives could not bring an action for damages in respect of his having been slain. That simple remedy of out- lawry provided in nine cases out of ten for the en- forcement of these rules in Iceland, although there was no executive government to enforce them. Now these Icelandic rules were and were called Law. They were not perfect law in the strictest sense of the term; but they were generally obeyed, for public opinion supported and enforced them, so that in nine cases out of ten they were found sufficient to secure the obedience to any decision which the Althing Court pronounced. 1 So, too, in the Middle Ages the fear of what might happen after death made ecclesiastical penalties for- midable. There was no ecclesiastical executive author- ity to enforce the penalty inflicted in any order of an Ecclesiastical Court, but to one who believed that if he 1 See upon this subject in the author's "Studies in History and Jurisprudence," an essay entitled "Primitive Iceland." 164 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS disobeyed such an order and was excommunicated for his disobedience, and died excommunicated, not having received the sacraments, his lot in a future life would be an unhappy one, that belief had a tremendous power, and most people did in practice obey. The fact, moreover, that the aims of international law are justice and peace, gives it, as Dr. David Jayne Hill has well said, a strong moral sanction. It is no doubt a moral rather than a legal or compulsory sanc- tion, still it is powerful because it has the respect for justice and order behind it. In earlier days philosophers found the basis of inter- national law in what they described as "The Law of Nature." You will find Grotius and the old jurists calling their treatises on the subject "The Law of Nations and of Nature." That law of nature is what St. Paul describes as "the law written on the tablets of the heart," and to which he refers when he says: "When the Gentiles which have not the Law (i. e., the Mosaic Law) do by nature the things of the Law, these not having the Law; are a law unto them- selves." In the Middle Ages the Law of Nature was asso- ciated to some extent with the law of Rome, because the law of the Roman Empire had obtained a sort of general recognition as having once prevailed over the civilized world, and as being still used in many countries, in more or less modernized forms, wherever it had not been superseded by any other system of authority proceeding from some well established State. It was, moreover, identified with the Law of God be- cause God is the author of Nature; and though few tried to state and nobody could prove exactly what DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 165 the Law of Nature actually contained and prescribed, and though many might in practice disregard the moral precepts on which it rested, still none denied its authority. Descending to the region of concrete facts, let us see what International Law has been since the days of Albericus Gentilis and Hugo Grotius, the first modern jurists who tried to give it shape in definite rules. If we turn over the leaves of a treatise on the subject we find that most of the positive doctrines laid down are concerned with War, because it is in War, or in connection with War, that most of the questions arise which international rules are needed to deal with. This, of course, was to be expected, just as we expect medical treatises to be chiefly occupied with disease, not with health, for War is the evil which Law is meant to cure or mitigate, or if possible to avert, avert, like a disease, by prophylactic treatment But unfortu- nately the rules for the conduct of War are just those which are most liable to be disregarded when war comes, because a belligerent State is tempted to resort to every measure which promises success, the prospect of immediate gain to be won by its own arms over- riding moral considerations, or the faith due to treaties, or a respect for the public opinion of the world. Where a stake is tremendous, as the stake of war is tremen- dous, the scruples which ordinarily restrain men or States, lose their deterrent force, just as an individual man will for the sake of saving his life do things which he would do under no other strain. A belligerent gov- ernment argues that if it succeeds, success will over- awe the rest of the world and will still more certainly secure pardon from its own citizens for offences com- 186 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS mitted in their interest. When one power has disre- garded rules previously accepted, the other belligerents feel that they cannot fight with their hands tied against an adversary who has his hands free, and that their enemy, who had first broken the rules, ought not to be allowed to profit by that breach. Thus it was that in the late war all the powers began by observing the rules laid down at Hague conferences against the use of poisonous gases and the bombardment of un- fortified towns, but when one belligerent had violated those rules, the other belligerents more or less followed the same practice, pleading that the first violator must not be permitted to take advantage of his own wrong. Cases somewhat similar might be cited from previous wars. The results of all these violations committed in the recent war and I do not here mean to claim that any power has been either recently or in former days altogether innocent was to discredit international rules as a whole. The ship of International Law has sprung many leaks, for it has been tossed and knocked about, and driven out of its course by winds and currents, so that most people leapt to the belief that it was unsea- worthy beyond repair, and might be treated as a dere- lict. This was an unwarranted assumption. The ves- sel may be able to refit and pursue its voyage, since storms do not last forever. Nevertheless, the infrac- tions during the war of rules that had seemed well set- tled have shaken public confidence, and we are forced to think seriously what can be done to reestablish con- fidence on a basis more secure. Neither the moral sense of the rulers of States and leaders of armies, nor custom, nor the fear of world opinion disapproving de- DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 167 partures from what custom and morality were held to have established, prevented the acts I have referred to. This happened for the simple reason that there was no certainty that offences would be followed by penalties, and the question follows: Is it possible to cure this defect? Can any authority be set up im- partial enough to try offences and strong enough to inflict punishment on States which break the rules they have solemnly promised to observe? That is one of the most far-reaching questions that stands before the world today. Before we approach the problem, before we con- sider what steps ought to be taken to repair and strengthen the storm-tossed vessel, a few words may be said as to the services which International Law may render. One of the most important is that of revising and redrafting the rules which were generally accepted before 1914, and of examining those rules in particular which related to the treatment in naval war- fare of enemy trading ships, and of neutral ships, in- cluding the subjects of contraband and blockade. It is of the highest consequence to lay down definite rules as to the relations between belligerents and neutrals on the sea in time of war, setting forth the exemptions to which neutral ships and neutral cargoes are to be entitled, and binding belligerents to respect those exemptions. Several other topics may be named as proper to be dealt with. On some of them it may prove impossible to lay down positive rules, because the cases that need to be provided for are too various in their details to admit of being dealt with in general terms, but all deserve to be investigated in a scientific spirit, by the light of history, of the doctrine of general 168 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS utility, and of "moral principles," such principles as those which the older world deemed to form part of the Law of Nature. Among such questions would fall that of the dura- tion of treaties, i. e., the length of the period during which they must be deemed binding. It is agreed that every treaty ought to be observed, else why make it; and it is also agreed that few treaties, if indeed any, can be made to last forever, or, shall we say? for an indefinitely long space of time. Can any rule be laid down determining during what period a treaty is to be held valid and operative which contains no pro- visions as to its duration? It is sometimes said that when circumstances change, the treaty naturally lapses, as a statute made for a particular purpose be- comes obsolete when the purpose has disappeared. But this doctrine that a treaty is understood to hold only when circumstances which attended its making are substantially the same (rebus sic stantibus) is too vague, and could be used on slight occasions as an excuse by a State dishonourably desiring to repudiate its obligations. Can anything be done to determine when circumstances have so far changed that a treaty can no longer be fairly deemed to be operative, and when such a change has come, to settle whether it is the duty of the high contracting parties to denounce, or to propose to amend, the treaty? Cases from the history of the ancient world (in which treaties were often made for terms of years) as well as from our own times, will occur to you. Three recent instances deserve mention. By the Treaty of Paris of 1856 Russia had promised to main- tain no navy in the Black Sea. In 1871 she announced DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 169 that she would no longer respect this provision. The announcement was made during the great war of that year between France and Germany, when it was im- possible for France and the other Powers that had signed the Treaty of Paris to take any action to compel its observance. These Powers, however, feeling bound to do something, tried to save their faces by calling a Conference, at which it was solemnly declared that Russia ought not to have denounced the treaty. The denunciation was nevertheless recognized as a fait ac- compli. "You have done wrong," said the Powers, "we are obliged to acquiesce, but please don't do it again." It was done again, and on this second occasion in a smaller case, that of a clause in the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 binding Russia not to fortify the harbor of Batum on the Black Sea. In 1886 the Russian Gov- ernment declared that it would disregard this provi- sion and would fortify Batum. Here was a clear breach of the treaty, but there was nothing to be done. Everybody felt that the matter was not of a suffi- cient importance to justify a declaration of war, so Russia had her way. Both these treaty obligations had been imposed upon Russia at a time when the forces arrayed against her were too strong to be resisted. She accepted them un- willingly, under a sort of duress. Contracts made be- tween private parties under duress are sometimes held void by courts of law, and although this doctrine can- not for obvious reasons be applied generally to treaties, the fact that a promise was extorted by menace does make some difference to the moral judgment we pass on a State which subsequently repudiates it. 170 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS A third case is that of Austria-Hungary, when Count von Aehrenthal, then foreign minister of that mon- archy, declared the intention of its government to an- nex Bosnia, which had been assigned to Austria under the Treaty of Berlin hi 1878, to be occupied by her without prejudice to the sovereignty of Turkey. Of course, nobody supposed for a moment that Austria would ever give back Bosnia to the Turks, but the treaty was still nominally in force. Aehrenthal's action was an evident breach of the treaty, and being so felt it gave a general shock to the stability of conditions all over Europe. It was in fact a sort of premonition of the war of 1914. Russia was for a time inclined to resent it, as a disturbance of the balance between her- self and Germany in Southeastern Europe, but she was not prepared for a conflict with the German Emperor who had proclaimed himself ready to stand beside Aus- tria. The action of these two Powers was felt to have been a serious breach of the public law of Europe; and the irritation caused in Russia contributed to make her come forward to throw her shield over Serbia in July, 1914. Other subjects which well deserve investigation are the following: When can intervention by a State or States in the internal affairs of another be justified? i. e., What disorders in a State, what circumstances making it a nuisance to its neighbors (such as internal disorders) warrant their interference? Take such cases as that of Cuba in 1898, when an insurrection had been going on for several years, or that of Mexico at many epochs since it became independent a century ago, or that of the civil war of the Sonderbund in Switzerland in 1846-7, when England saved the Confederation from DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 171 Metternich, or that of Argentina under the tyranny of Rosas, or that of Turkey during the last two centuries when her misgovernment, and especially the treat- ment of her Christian subjects, became international scandals. What is to be said for the policy of neutralizing certain States, as Belgium and Switzerland and the Congo State were neutralized, and how may this, if desired, be best accomplished? It has been in the cases of Switzerland and Belgium a very useful pro- vision and some hold that it ought to be more widely applied. What are the merits of what is called the Open Door policy, and how can it be set up and guaranteed, with due respect to the independence of the country for which it is guaranteed, as well as with fairness to the commerce of all countries? What can be done to place under the common pro- tection of all States interested the communications by land and water between them and across their respective territories into those of other States? Many nations have already made arrangements which have worked to the general benefit for the protection of what is called Intellectual Property. Provisions for In- ternational Copyright, and for the protection of patents are cases in point. Similarly, rules have been made to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and for other sanitary or charitable purposes. The Red Cross is now an international institution. How far can the principles underlying such arrangements be extended to other classes of cases for the general benefit of civilization? One of the great advantages of these various schemes is that they accustom nations to work- 172 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ing together. They give them a sense that they are citi- zens of a larger world than their own. The more dif- ferent peoples are brought in contact for these bene- ficent purposes, the more they learn to consider them- selves as being all members one of another, each with an interest in the well being of others, the better it is for each of them and for the progress of the world. To deal with these subjects, as well as to revise, and reestablish when revised, the rules of International Law that were accepted and usually obeyed, before 1914, there should be organized some body com- posed of men specially capable for the work. Non- omcial associations of jurists from many countries, such as the Institut du Droit International, have for years past rendered services of high value in this direc- tion, but differences of opinion frequently arise between those who come from Britain and the United States on the one hand, and those who come from Continental Europe on the other, and the conclusions arrived at have no official authority. Might not some new asso- ciation or commission be now created by the most enlightened and civilized States, and invested by them with authority to amend, and codify when amended, those rules which they find best? The smaller coun- tries, such as Switzerland, Norway and Holland, who have already produced many distinguished jurists, could usefully join in this work, and would be all the fitter because they were neutral in the late war. The United States would, by its detachment from European controversies, be specially fitted to take a leading part. During the last ten or fifteen years, and especially since the creation of the American Society of International Law and the publication of its ably DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 173 conducted Journal, the United States would appear to have done more for International Law than any country in Europe, and therefore if such a Commission as I suggest were to be formed, European jurists would consider the participation of the United States to be essential, and likely to carry with it an assurance of success. Such a Commission could not indeed be em- powered to enact any Code. Its function would be to prepare a code fit to be submitted to the Associated States for a searching examination by the lawyers and governments of each separate State, so that all such portions of the Code as found general acceptance might be adopted by as many States as possible, and thus re- ceive official authority, these States undertaking to ob- serve them. Proposals of this nature seem to have received in Europe less attention than they deserve, but they have fortunately occupied the mind of an international jurist so eminent as Mr. Root and have received his universally respected approval. A digest or code of International Law is the natural comple- ment and almost indispensable accompaniment of an International Court of Justice. I have already observed that it is chiefly to the solution of war problems that international jurispru- dence has been directed. We have got now to think more about its utility in peace time and turn it to bet- ter account for peace purposes. It has done one great service in helping to secure protection for small States, asserting their equality in point of rights with large and powerful States, just as in a civilized community the law and the courts aim at dealing out equal justice to rich and poor. It is moreover the natural foe of militarism, because Law is the only alternative to 174 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Force. In the slow development of civilized society, Law has succeeded in crushing down violence, and expelling violence from well ordered communities. How is that idea to be applied to the relations of independent States each of which has been hitherto a law unto itself? The enactment of rules of international law to be for a commonwealth of mankind what statutes are within each State is a comparatively simple matter. The process of preparation and enactment will doubt- less take time, because all States must be consulted, and on some points their divergent interests (real and supposed) will long delay and perhaps prevent agree- ment. Nevertheless the matters on which agreement can be secured will be far more numerous, so a fairly complete international code may be expected. The enforcement of the rules enacted is a far more difficult matter. As between belligerents it is hardly to be looked for. Each will probably disregard in war the engagements it has made in peace, and will use every means of attack physically possible. But as between belligerents and neutrals the sense of honor- able obligation, coupled with the fear of offending neutrals whose unfriendliness may be harmful, will generally suffice to secure the observance of any rules accepted in peace time, and this will be a real gain. No system of law has ever been perfectly enforced. Human instruments must be used; and there will always be some stupid or hopelessly prejudiced juries, some incompetent or corrupt judges. Where inde- pendent States are concerned, the difficulties of com- pelling obedience to anything called Law must evi- dently be greater, for there does not now exist any DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 175 international force to restrain or punish offenders. But the power of opinion, i. e., of the views and feelings entertained by the best elements in all nations, is grow- ing and seems likely to grow. Few States would today refuse to submit to arbitration any controversy which an arbitral tribunal is fit to deal with. Still fewer indeed hardly any would refuse to obey a judgment rendered by such a tribunal. The idea of Law, that is, of a regular and permanent means of preserving order, and of protecting the weak by courts of justice to the exclusion of violence, has been the greatest influence making for the proper internal security of every com- munity. That idea, having behind it moral authority and the sense of general benefit, has now to do the like work for the commonwealth of all man- kind, forming and educating a public opinion of the world which will impose a check upon the violent or aggressive propensities of any one State. The con- ception of such a public opinion of mankind cherished by the reason of the few and expressing the hopes of the many, has hitherto lacked body and substance. Such substance, such a concrete form, it may find in International Law which will be both its offspring and its guardian. Opinion may anchor itself to Law, Law may instruct and steady Opinion. The task that now lies before us is to see whether, and how far, principles embodied in law and applied in con- crete cases by Courts can be made to command a respect and exercise an authority before which all States will bow. LECTURE VI. POPULAR CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY AND THE MORALITY OF STATES. THOSE Europeans who have deplored the failure of diplomacy to apply high principles to the conduct of international relations and to secure the peaceful set- tlement of disputes between States, have frequently attributed these defects to the methods and the persons by whom diplomatic business has in time past been managed. Such critics, European and American, tell us that the relations of States have been ill handled because Monarchs or Cabinets, or the officials charged with administration, have been arbitrary, unsympa- thetic, narrow-minded, or simply incompetent. Even in States where the constitution gave to a represen- tative assembly the right to control foreign affairs, those affairs had been usually left in the hands of a small class or group of persons, purblind in their views, selfish in their aims, cynical in their indifference to peace, jealous of their own power, loving to do their work in darkness because their deeds would not bear the light of day. If and when free peoples should take the matter into their own hands and negotiate openly with one another, a larger sympathy and a more intelligent comprehension of the character and wishes of other nations would change everything for 176 THE MORALITY OF STATES 177 the better. There would be fewer misunderstandings, and when controversies arose, these would be settled on principles of justice, since to all free peoples justice is dear. This view, these hopes and purposes, have expressed themselves in England by the demand for what is called Democratic Control of Foreign Policy, a de- mand that the masses of the people shall be kept constantly informed of all that is being done in the sphere of foreign relations, and shall have the right to direct and exercise the function of directing the course to be pursued therein. When the World War broke out in 1914, a consid- erable section of British opinion explained the catas- trophe by declaring that in all the countries concerned foreign relations had been secretly conducted, with little regard to the popular will, and insisted that had the people been consulted in foreign as they are in domestic affairs, the calamity might have been averted. Whether or no this belief was well founded, it has not been lessened by what happened at the end of the war. The Peace Treaties (as observed in an earlier lecture) have created general dissatisfaction. Those treaties were made secretly, with no reference to parliaments of the points under discussion, and though the statesmen who made them did not belong to the social class which was accused in former times of being out of touch with the people, the work the plenipotentiaries accomplished was deemed no better than that of their aristocratic predecessors. Hence the demand for direct popular control. Men argued, "If popular control has worked well hi domestic affairs, why not in foreign affairs? Take the management of foreign relations out of the 178 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS hands of the Few and entrust it to the Many. Just as legislation has been popularized by universal suffrage, so let foreign policy be also." These arguments may seem to make a prima fade case for a change. If the old system brought Europe to the condition hi which it was when the Great War broke out; if that system, still more closely followed, sees Europe in the deplorable condition which the Peace Treaties have brought about, treaties every one of which already needs amendment, is it not well to make a complete new departure by trying the method of direct popular control? Apart from this temporary outburst of English opin- ion on the subject, the question of the power which the People can and ought to exert in directing foreign policy is profoundly important and deserves to be considered in any survey of international rela- tions as a whole. I will try to examine this matter briefly by enquiring, First, by what means, that is to say, by what constitutional machinery, can the People control foreign affairs? Secondly, assuming proper machinery to have been created for that purpose, how far are the People qualified to use the powers which they are to exercise? What would democratic control of foreign policy mean in practice? In domestic affairs the People can act either directly by way of Referendum, as in Swit- zerland, or as under the revised Constitution of Massa- chusetts and some other States, or they can act in- directly through their representatives in a legislature. Either method is suitable to matters that can be dealt with by legislation. But foreign policy is a different THE MORALITY OF STATES 179 kind of matter. The facts to be dealt with are con- stantly changing, changing from week to week, changing at home, changing abroad, and through the changes new issues are emerging. The whole people cannot be frequently summoned to vote directly, or to give fresh instructions to their representatives. Those representatives who have been elected upon domestic issues cannot tell what are the wishes of the people upon the foreign issues that are from time to time emerging or passing into new phases, for thereby points are raised that were not before the people at the moment of the last preceding election. The members of a legislature, besides being occupied with other busi- ness, are too numerous to debate many of the issues that suddenly come to the front in foreign policy. The legislature may indeed act by a Committee a method on which I shall say a word or two later. But that is not Popular Control. It is a return to management by the Few, and a management which, to be effective, will often have to be secret. It is a relapse into the old methods which it was desired to abolish. The argument that popular opinion ought to be ascertained and obeyed is doubtless true in principle, but the difficulty is to know, without taking a special vote on each important issue, what it is that the people really do wish. There may be several divergent views, and who can tell which view is that of the majority? Per- haps the majority have no view at all, because they have not had time to inform themselves. The second question relates to the fitness of the People to direct foreign policy. I will begin by setting forth the arguments of those who deny this fitness, and 180 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS will then endeavor, after striking a balance between those arguments and the doctrine of full democratic control, to indicate how much truth each view con^ tains. It is urged that in order that the people, or their representatives, may have an opinion of value upon any question of foreign policy they must understand that question. They must know all the main facts of the case, and the reasons in favor of the various courses that might be pursued. Not one in a thousand of the citizens, not one in ten of the representatives, may have enough knowledge to enable him to form a sound opinion. Control over policy is an exercise of will, and will is a decision to take one course or another, founded upon a judgment of the arguments for each. Now a judgment formed without knowledge is mere guesswork. Domestic issues are difficult enough, especially those of an economic nature, but most of them are at any rate within the range of the citizen's home experience. Foreign questions, however, demand an acquaintance with history and geography and va- rious conditions affecting a foreign country which are far outside the range of the average "good citizen," however capable he may be of voting rationally on the items of a domestic political program. He does not care for these foreign questions. He does not read about them. He has no time for them. How can he attend to them? Even the names of foreign cities and foreign statesmen are strange to him. If he knew FitzGerald's translation of Omar Khayyam he would be apt to say, with that poet, "What have we to do With Kai Kobad the Great or Kai Khosru?" THE MORALITY OF STATES 181 It may be said that the average good citizen has a source of knowledge in the press, a source about which something must be said, because it is a principal factor in the conduct of foreign policy, affecting not only the mass of average citizens who read it, but also legis- latures and the executive government itself. Now, it is observed by those whose arguments I am trying to present, that a newspaper has the enormous power of supplying whatever facts it chooses to select for notice, of bringing its own views before a multitude of readers who would not look at them were they not printed side by side with the paragraphs that give the news, and also of repeating over again from day to day both facts and views. Newspapers and magazines exist not for the sake of disseminating true facts and incul- cating sound opinions, but primarily for making money by maintaining or increasing the circulation of the journal, because the more circulation the larger will be the receipts to be expected from advertisements. There is therefore a strong inducement for a journal to fill its pages with those facts and those views that will be most likely to attract readers. This is a motive which tells more or less upon all organs. It does not make for impartiality. Those proprietors and editors who have a high sense of honor and wish to deserve the respect of honorable men will not abuse their power in the way of suppressing or misrepresenting facts. But there will always be many newspapers which aim at circulation by publishing what they think will please the average reader, who likes to have his own country praised and other countries disparaged, who prefers to see his country's case in any controversy justified and the case of its opponent refuted or decried. Na- 182 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS tions, like men, are accessible through their vanity. Count Czernin, in one of the most interesting of recent books dealing with the war, has described the prevail- ing "servility and odious sycophancy which surrounds monarchs." A similar tendency disposes those who ad- dress the sovereign people to tell them they are always right and other peoples wrong, and to promise them victory as the false prophets in the Book of Kings promised victory to King Ahab when they said, "Go up to Ramoth Gilead and conquer." This is one reason why unconscientious organs of the lower type cannot be trusted to supply the knowledge which the public needs. Another reason is that, though the American press and the British press are, broadly speaking, not corruptible, there are countries in which money exer- cises great power, buying up journals, or suborning them to pervert facts and to sell their advocacy of opinion. We have this power shamelessly exerted dur- ing and since 1914 in several countries. There are also countries in which governments habitually use certain journals to misstate or suppress facts, or to advocate particular policies, hounding 'on their organs to attack other governments, even if friendly, in order to work up an opinion in their own favor, the public, except a few who are behind the scenes, not divining the sources whence the propaganda comes. Bismarck, with his subsidized "Reptile Press," set an example in this way which has been abundantly followed elsewhere. The average citizen, however desirous to judge fairly, is perplexed by the opposite views which newspapers pre- sent and between which he has scant means for discriminating. Seldom is he allowed to obtain a fair THE MORALITY OF STATES 183 and comprehensive view of the political situation as between his own and any other country. It would thus appear that apart from all misrepre- sentation of facts and all honest or dishonest partisan advocacy of views, the average good citizen has not the means of obtaining nor the leisure to study the mate- rials he needs to judge any but the very simplest and broadest questions of policy. Even supposing him, however, to have at hand some materials, can we be sure that he will use them any better than they have been used hitherto by the small class which has been virtually left in control of foreign relations? The aver- age good citizen may be no less liable to take a narrow and a purely selfish view of the interests of his country. He may be equally prone to aggression, may be equally disposed to resent what is represented as an affront, equally liable to be swept away by passion. The ancient republics of Greece and the republics of me- diaeval Italy had as little regard for the rights of their neighbors as had the monarchies and the oligarchies of the Middle Ages. It is often said that the masses of the people most desire peace, because war brings to their children, with an equal chance of death, a far slighter chance of glory than it brings to the richer class. But wars have in fact been generally just as popular in one social class as in another, for they ap- peal to the same national vanity and pride and to that same fighting instinct and love of so-called glory. This has been seen in the case of wars now recognized as having been unjust or unnecessary, such as were, in the case of Great Britain, the Afghan War of 1878-9 and the South African War of 1899, in both of which 184 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS a considerable section, though perhaps not a majority, of the masses supported the executive governments which made the wars, and which had in both cases a party majority in Parliament. As respects secrecy, complained of as tending to com- mit the people to courses they would have disap- proved, it may be sometimes regrettable, but is often indispensable. When other Powers are covertly in- triguing to injure a State, its government must coun- terwork their designs by means which would be use- less if disclosed. Alliances may have to be concluded and preparations made which cannot be revealed to the legislature. Information must be obtained from quarters that would not give it except in the strictest confidence. Hence it will be necessary, so long as the relations of States continue to be those of rivalry, suspicion and a desire for aggrandizement, to leave the conduct of all details and sometimes of important decisions also, in the hands of a few experts, giving them a wide discretion. So far, I have stated the case of those who denounce the old methods and also the counter case presented on behalf of those methods. Let us now try to reach a fair conclusion on the matter. There is doubtless much to be said for changing a system which has yielded bad results in the past. A democracy is not consistently democratic if it leaves the issues which make for war or peace in the hands of a few persons permitted to pledge it before they have consulted it. Secret agreements have frequently turned out ill for those who made them, whereas pub- licity would have disclosed the dangers lurking in them. The secret agreement made between England and THE MORALITY OF STATES 185 Turkey in 1878, and the secret treaties made in the recent war between the belligerent allies, are now gen- erally regretted. Some of those who advocate the transference of the management of foreign affairs to the mass of the people seem to argue thus: "The Few have managed foreign relations badly. The Many are the opposite of the Few. The Many will therefore manage foreign relations well." This reasoning is unsound, be- cause it omits another explanation. The bad manage- ment of foreign relations in the past may lie in the nature of foreign relations themselves, or perhaps in the nature of men as men. The difficulties may be such that no set of men will really conduct foreign policy with wisdom and justice. It may be that no plan as yet suggested, either that of control by the Few or that of control by the Many, will give complete satisfaction. In one point the Few have an advan- tage. Yet on the other hand there are advantages that may be claimed for the old system. A long course of deli- cate foreign negotiations cannot be conducted, and the executive acts they require cannot be determined, by a popular assembly or even by deliberative council too large for familiar discussion, nor, indeed, by any body whatever constantly sitting in public. Details can be discussed only by a small body, and details may be im- portant in the train of consequences they entail. The situation to be dealt with may change from day to day. There are negotiations which (if the world of international politics continues to be that world of intrigue and rapacity which it has hitherto been) could not successfully be prosecuted if the public were kept 186 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS informed of them, and might yet be the only resource in a dangerous crisis. The masses of the people do not in any European country know enough of foreign countries to enable them to form sound opinions in particular crises. Take several questions which are before the world at this moment: How much does the average French or English voter know about the capac- ity of Germany to pay the indemnities promised in the Treaty of Versailles, or about the Polish and German elements in the population of Silesia, or about the claims of Poland in Lithuania, or about conditions in Western Asia Minor and the respective rights of Greeks and Turks to territories in dispute between them? We who have been attending the Conferences of this Institute have been learning much more than we knew before about these things. But we are priv- ileged here. We have had in the Conferences some special sources of first-hand information. The aver- age voter knows scarcely anything about such matters, and if he does not know how can he instruct his repre- sentative as to the vote he shall give? If we turn to representative bodies, who presumably are somewhat better informed, do we not see how apt their members are to be influenced by the party feeling which leads them to attack or to defend some particular act done by a government because they are either opponents or the supporters of the Executive? Foreign politics become in representative assemblies mere counters in the game of politics. It has been very difficult to get a question of foreign policy discussed in the British Parliament absolutely on its merits without regard to party ties. We find this in every country. It was so in Germany in the days of Bismarck, who sometimes played the THE MORALITY OF STATES 187 game of foreign politics in order to strengthen his posi- tion in the domestic controversies of Germany. Nevertheless, admitting all this, it is also true that from time to time certain broad and comparatively simple issues arise on which the people ought to be con- sulted before any irrevocable step is taken, and on which the judgment of the people is quite as likely to be right as is that of the Ministers who are conducting the negotiations, or that of the Opposition leaders who are denouncing their course. There is, often, a certain kind of soundness in the popular mind which may prove to be a guide safer than is any set of priv- ileged persons. The people are not qualified to deal with every kind of matter, but when there is a plain issue, and especially if it is a moral issue, there is often seen a fairness and even a wisdom in the judgment of the people which we are not sure to find in the poli- ticians. The people, if not fevered by passion, for then they become dangerous may have a more broad common sense view of what is and what is not worth contending for than a group of officials, who may be steeped in traditions or prejudices. They may some- times also have a clearer sense of what is just and rea- sonable and a greater willingness to settle disputes peacefully. In the two English cases already adverted to, they condemned the Afghan War of 1878-9 as soon as an election gave them the opportunity, and they passed a like judgment on the South African War at the election of 1905. If public opinion is generally in- curious or apathetic about foreign relations, that is partly because these topics have been so much with- drawn from public knowledge as to receive less public discussion than they require. 188 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Much more might be done than has hitherto been done in Europe to keep the people informed and en- able them to express their opinion on the lines of pol- icy to which they are being committed. There is some- thing to be said for creating a small committee of the legislature which might be found useful not only in criticizing and in advising with the ministers, but also, where the questions involved are not confidential, in enabling Ministers to be brought into a salutary touch with public opinion outside. Though this would be in Britain a new departure, the success of which might be doubtful, the experiment seems to be worth trying. To examine the working of the Committee on Foreign Relations in your Senate would require more time than is at my disposal. The first thing and the indispensable thing to enable the people to control those large issues of foreign af- fairs which they are entitled to determine is that they should, obtaining more knowledge, give a more continuously active attention to the affairs of the outer world. If ever this should come to pass, their interest, if they could be led to see it, would make against aggressive policies. Would the transference of international relations from a professional class to the people tend to raise the moral standard by which the international action of States has been hitherto regu- lated. Those who advocate such a transfer have in- sistently argued that it will have that effect. The argu- ment raises a fundamental question, and to appraise it we must enquire what have been the causes which have kept that standard low. Why have those who conduct negotiations and direct foreign policies failed to attain, or perhaps we ought to say, seldom tried to THE MORALITY OF STATES 189 attain, the moral standard that is required from honor- able men in the private relations of life, and even in the political life of their own state, although the standards of politicians are usually deemed to be below those of private social life? That this moral standard has not been attained ap- pears both from the dicta of statesmen and from their practice. Not only in the ancient world but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also, the maxim that every State that can injure us is our natural enemy, a maxim delivered by a famous politician in the sixteenth century, was in practice accepted and followed; and the corollary that against an enemy all things are permissible, was the common rule of con- duct, so that Napoleon went no further than his prede- cessors when he said that a statesman's heart ought to be in his head. .National interests were taken as equivalent to rights, while national duties were vir- tually ignored. Such advances as some countries have seen in the behavior expected from individual private citizens towards one another have not been accom- panied by similar moral improvements in the relations of peoples to one another. Some improvement there has certainly been. Treachery and murder would discredit a sovereign more in the twentieth century than they discredited Cesare Borgia in the end of the fifteenth. Violence and aggression are not so open and shameless as hi the days of Louis XIV of France and Frederick II of Prussia. Nevertheless there were plenty of instances even before 1914 to show that States do not hesitate to follow their own interests without regard to the harm they cause to others who have done them no 190 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS wrong, and that they do not scruple to practice against one another deceits which no self-respecting man of business would practice against a rival in trade. With- out attempting to deal with the whole subject, I will submit to you some suggestions which may throw light on the problem. First. The fact that morality stands on a lower level as between States than as between individuals may be partly explained by considering the points in which the State regarded as an organized body of men differs from an individual man. An individual is re- sponsible to his fellow-citizens and feels himself amen- able to their opinion, but the government of a State is responsible to no one outside the State. A constitu- tional State, i. e., one in which the will of a monarch is not supreme, is impersonal, because its acts are the acts of a large number of men. In a constitutional country responsibility is divided between the executive, the legislature, which in some countries controls the exec- utive, and the citizen voters who elect the legislature. An act done by the State proceeds directly or indirectly from the wills of this great number of persons; and though the blame for whatever has been done wrongly can sometimes be fixed upon the executive, or even possibly upon one or more members of the executive, such as the Foreign Minister or Prime Minister, they or he is or are so closely associated with the others that responsibility must always be more or less divided. Now wherever there is divided responsibility there is a weaker sense of duty. The individual man finds it easier to excuse himself for turpitude or timidity by pleading that he was beguiled by others. In absolute monarchies it was different, and yet even Louis XIV THE MORALITY OF STATES 191 when he said that he was the State "L'etat, c'est moi" was not the same thing as Louis XIV the man. He purported to be acting for and on behalf of his subjects, and he might feel entitled to do things in their behalf which he would not have done on his own behalf. Moreover, everybody knew that the King must be advised by Ministers, so part of the responsi- bility fell upon them. Hence, so long as his personal honor was not involved by any direct personal prom- ise, acts of injustice or deceit done by the State which he embodied, were done rather by it than by him, and were not supposed to stain his personal honor. When, a century before the days of Louis XIV, the Emperor Charles V, was traveling across France, he was not made prisoner by King Francis I, although that king had been his enemy and even his prisoner, because to have seized him would have been a breach of the rules of chivalry. Charles V relied on those rules and Francis I, though not personally a man of fine feeling, felt himself amenable to the opinion of European knighthood as a whole. That was a very strong reason to keep in the path of honor. He knew that all the knightly men of his age, such as the ever famous Chevalier Bayard, who had fallen by his side at the battle of Pavia, would condemn him if he did an unknightly act. By the time of Frederick of Prus- sia this sense of what chivalry required had died out, and in modern States it seldom happens that there is any single person on whom an obligation to observe the code of honor can be fixed. Further, every individual citizen of a State is in his daily life responsible not only to the opinion of his fellow-citizens but to the law of his country. The law 192 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS maintains a standard of moral conduct. There are kinds of base conduct, such as ingratitude, which law does not attempt to punish, but hi the sphere of contracts and torts and crimes, it lays down rules which must be respected, and enforces them by civil damages or by penalties. Lawyers are wont to say that commer- cial morality would sink to a low level were it not for the courts of law and especially the courts of equity, which have prescribed a standard of good faith. In the international sphere there is no law to keep States up to the mark of fair dealing or to restrain them from aggression, because there is no penalty prescribed for an offense, no damages recoverable for a tort or for the breach of a contract. No protest was made by any State when Austria and France seized the territory of the old Venetian republic hi 1797, nor when Ger- many invaded Belgium in 1914. It is only weakness or fear that has usually deterred States from robbery by violence, and nothing has deterred most of them from deceit. Note another point wherein the standards of States and individuals differ. When an individual man com- mits a wrongful act he does it for his own benefit or in the indulgence of his own revenge. Selfishness is the motive. Selfishness is an anti-social motive and excites repulsion in private society, so, when selfish- ness leads a man to be mean and heartless, other men dislike and avoid him. But when the rulers of a State do wrong on behalf of the State, this element at least of turpitude is absent. Unless the act turns out to have been a blunder as well as a crime, its perpetrator may even be praised by his own countrymen for his disregard of those "petty scruples" which some per- THE MORALITY OF STATES 193 sons like to call "the bugbears of petty minds." The interests of the country, real or supposed, are taken to cover the offense. People say, "Well, anyhow, there was something patriotic about him he meant to do his duty by the country." Few men avow, and of course nearly all moralists condemn, the doctrine that the End justifies the Means. But it is widely followed in public life, and oddly enough, those who think themselves idealists, the men who live and fight for the thing, whatever it may be, that they put above everything else and call a Sacred Cause, frequently apply this insidious doc- trine. If anybody thinks a particular cause absolutely vital to human welfare, if he thinks the righteousness and the justice of the nation or the welfare of humanity depend upon it, do not be startled if you find him prepared to do anything, however wrong, in defense and furtherance of that cause. I have known people, otherwise admirable in character and conduct, who have openly avowed that they had told falsehoods for the sake of what they believed to be a sacred cause. The worldly cynic knows the danger of such a course, and, if he practices it, covers up his tracks, while the enthusiast who is devoted to what he thinks a noble purpose is often not ashamed to do evil that ^ood may come. The dazzling splendor of his aim blinds him in the wrongfulness of the means. This is especially true of men whose devotion to some cause holds them closely associated for a common enterprise. As formerly, men personally worthy, ex- cellent and pious men, perhaps members of religious orders, were ready to resort to and defend offenses done in the supposed interest of religion, so too mem- 194 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS bers of secret revolutionary societies have often in later times developed a fanaticism which shrinks from no methods, however horrible. This was seen in the French Revolution and has recently been seen in Rus- sia. Devotion to the cause becomes an obsession, and suspends, if it does not extinguish, the sense of truth- fulness and even the stirrings of compassion. We all know that when men desire something ar- dently, they will welcome help from quarters which they would otherwise hate or despise. A fine old Dublin physician, one of the heads of his profession two generations ago, and himself a pious Catholic, ob- served to a friend who had expressed surprise at his being consulted by a statesman violently opposed to him in politics and religion, that if the Pope were sick, and the devil was the only being that could cure his disease, the devil would be called in to prescribe. Now the interest of the State is the object which has most often prompted and been most often used to justify deceit, violence and cruelty. "The safety of the State is the highest law," l said the Roman. Kings, even pious kings, statesmen, even popular leaders in civilized countries, have constantly broken the moral law in order to secure advantages for their nation. This most often happens during a war, when- ever in an emergency the very life of the people seems to be in danger. It is believed that to save the State from defeat, perhaps from extinction, resort may rightly be had to every possible expedient. If an indi- vidual man may do wrong to save his own life, so it is argued that a statesman may do wrong when his country's life is at stake. The statesman knows that 1 Salus reipublicse lex suprema. THE MORALITY OF STATES 195 if he succeeds, his wrongdoing will be pardoned or even applauded by his fellow-citizens, while if he fails, his share in the failure may be forgotten in the general catastrophe, or his action be excused because it was done from a patriotic motive; and reflects also that he would have been no less blamed had he feared to venture on any course which seemed to promise suc- cess. Disgrace will attach not to the wrongdoing but to the failure. Here again, the fact that the wrong is done not to another human being but to another State makes a difference to our judgment of it, because no one feels for a foreign State the kind of sympathy that might be felt in private life even for an opponent or a rival. The foreign State is not a human being but a vague entity; and it may be an actual or even a possible enemy, in which case it is supposed to be outside the sphere of moral relations, and the maxim "All's fair in war," is deemed to supply an excuse. And here we come to the last point of difference between the relations of States and the relations of individuals. In the case of individuals reciprocity may be expected, because there exists within each country not only a law but also a public opinion carrying with it a social censure which insures for each man some- thing equivalent to what he renders to others. When a man refrains from violence or fraud to his fellow- citizens, he does so knowing that law and public opin- ion will impose a like restraint on his competitor or opponent. But if a nation treats an enemy State fairly and honorably, speaking the truth to it, and does no more harm in war than the customs of war allow, what security is there that the enemy may not be trick- ing it and that he will not break all the rules of war in 196 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS his effort to destroy its troops and devastate its terri- tory? Men feel obliged to resort to the same methods against the foe which they had deprecated when used by him and which they had desired to avoid. If one side begins to use poison gas, or to drop bombs on un- armed towns, the other side thinks it must follow suit, and becomes cruel in trying to vanquish cruelty. These considerations go a long way not only to ex- plain the disregard by States of the rules recognized as needed to govern the relations of citizens to one another and of governments to their own citizens, but also to palliate I do not say to defend, but to pal- liate some at least of the familiar infractions of ethical principles. Even the doctrine that the end jus- tifies the means, a doctrine which shocks us when it is boldly proclaimed, has been defended by experienced statesmen as not wholly false. Cases, they say, do frequently arise in which a deviation from the per- fectly straight course is so slight in comparison with the value of the result to be obtained that a virtuous man may properly do what would otherwise be a wrongful act. Meticulous scruples may have to yield to emergent necessities. "Such cases," they say, "can- not be defined; we should lose our way in a labyrinth of casuistry. But such cases exist." Most of us have had experience of them, and have found how difficult they are to handle. These explanations, some of which I have heard from the lips of practised statesmen, are given for what they are worth. But whatever force may be allowed to these or other explanations, they do not justify the want of conscience that has in the past made inter- national relations so full of distrust and trickery, and THE MORALITY OF STATES 197 that still keeps State morality at a level lower than that which the honorable man is expected to reach in private life. Can it be true that a State may violate all the rules of justice and good faith, and slaughter any number of innocent persons in order to save its own life, when we should condemn a sailor on a desert island who killed his comrade because there was not enough food to support them both? Such a case came before the courts of England not long ago, and it was held I think by an unanimous court that the law of England and I doubt not that is the law of the States of the American Union also treats the killing of one man by another in order to save his life as murder. If the argument of State necessity were to be allowed to excuse an international crime, it would always be pleaded even on slight occasions, because those who allege it are themselves the judges of whether the necessity has arisen. There would be little hope for the world were it to be admitted that States are as against one another no better than wolves, that rapac- ity and guile and remorseless force must always be expected to stalk like roaring lions through a world in which the weak will be the victims of the strong. In order to reach some conclusions in the matter, I will state briefly to you the two extreme theories, that one may see whether between them some intermediate view can be discovered. These two extreme theories may be stated as follows: One is that each nation, being in a "State of Nature" towards other nations, with no law and no superior power able to enforce law, and being entitled at all hazards to preserve its own existence, may act as it pleases towards other States; that there are no Duties; that the thing called Justice 198 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS is only the interest of the Stronger; that Rights are whatever the stronger can obtain by Force. This doctrine is a very old one and you will find it clearly set forth in some chapters (85-113) in the fifth book of Thucydides, where the historian shows how the Athenians used it to justify an unprovoked attack on the people of Melos. 1 Machiavelli restated it. Many governments have practiced it, and there seem to be some that practice it still. The other theory is that every man is bound by the ties of a common humanity to every other man, and ought not, even when commanded by the State, to take away another's life. Neither has the State any moral right so to command him. To this doctrine some Christians add another which they think they find in the Gospels, that no man is, even at the order of the State, to use physical force against another. No one is entitled to resist he must submit to insult and endure injury rather than defend himself against it. This is a view which requires a short consideration, not so much in respect of any practical importance at- tributable to it, but because it has recently raised acute controversies. Seeking to base itself upon the Gospel, it holds that the person injured must not resist, but endure at the hands of any enemy any injustice or injury rather than fight. The theory has never been put in practice by any State; nor has it ever been accepted by any large body of Christians, although it is held by the Mennonites and by the Society of Friends, and was much discussed in England at the time when compulsion was being applied in 1916 to 1 See also a discussion of the subject in the first book of Plato's Republic. THE MORALITY OF STATES 199 strengthen the volunteer army. It is hard to see how that extreme form of it which prescribes absolute non- resistance could be carried out. However much we may respect the conscientiousness with which the Moravian Brethren and the Mennonites have clung to this doctrine, it may well be doubted whether the precepts of the Gospel to which these bodies appeal are to be taken or can be taken literally. Certain it is that those who take that literal interpretation have not shown how their principles can be applied in such a world as this has been and is. Suppose that a band of savages were to burst in upon the Moravian Breth- ren, slaughtering their wives and children as the Turk- ish soldiers in 1915 slaughtered the women and chil- dren of the Eastern Christians? Would it be the duty of the Moravians to stand by and lift no hand to save the innocent? In that case all the non-resisting Chris- tians would have been slaughtered before there had been time for their example to mitigate the fury of the savages. Recently, when some theorists in Eng- land had a concrete case like this put before them at a discussion at which I was present, the only answer which they gave was to say that the thing would not in fact happen. It would not happen in any country possessing a civilized government with soldiers and police to protect innocent law-abiding citizens, but the physical force which soldiers and police would apply against savages or murderers would be itself that very force which the doctrine of non-resist- ance condemns. Those who appeal to that doctrine cannot shelter themselves behind the fact that soldiers and police exist, for their theory condemns the appli- cation of any physical force; and a theory must be 200 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS tested by applying it consistently. Moreover, in Tur- key the soldiers and police were themselves the mur- derers. Was it the duty of any Armenians and Nes- torians who might possess arms to allow their women and children to be murdered when resistance might have saved them? The truth must evidently lie some- where between these opposed theories, one of which has no condemnation for oppression and cruelty and the other of which would remove the means of re- straints which now exist to prevent them. No one, so far as I know, has formulated any body of coherent rules defining the correlative moral duties of States towards one another. I would not venture to propound any such rules, but a few observations may be offered bearing on the subject as seen from the side of the individual, from the side of the State, and from the side of the general welfare of mankind ; as it is easier to name acts which a State ought not to do than to set forth what it may do, let us take cases hi which States have within the last two centuries committed what are generally admitted to have been dishonorable or wicked acts. The State must not seek to deceive other States, nor undertake obligations it does not mean to perform. It must not break its plighted faith. 1 It must not make unprovoked attacks upon its neighbors. It must not encourage conspiracies and stir up rebel- lion in other countries for its own advantage. It must not support and encourage the government of another State in acts of oppression and cruelty. 1 See as to the cases in which the obligation of a treaty may be deemed to have become inoperative, p. 168-70, ante. THE MORALITY OF STATES 201 It ought not, when it has vanquished an enemy, to inflict humiliating injuries in gratification of its own revengeful passion. Vindictiveness, odious in an in- dividual man, is bad policy in a State, for it prolongs exasperation and sows the seeds of future trouble. Reparations and indemnities may be exacted as dam- ages for injuries and are awarded by courts of law, but vengeance is a dangerous guide. There are things which a State must not require its envoys or its ministers, or its generals in war time to do. If it demands from them services which would be offences against either the laws or the code of honor in its own country, as, for instance, if it directs its officers to seize as hostages and even to put to death the innocent citizens of an invaded country, it will suffer. If the public sentiment of its own country is outraged, honorable men will not serve it, while the public sentiment of other countries will certainly con- demn it. The example of wrongdoing will lower the moral tone of the citizens, impairing their sense of honor and justice towards one another. Scrupulous and high-minded men may be loath to serve a State which imposes such tasks, and politics will fall into the hands of the base and reckless. If a State stands alone hi openly disregarding ethical principles it will come to be hated as well as feared, and will probably drive its neighbors to form alliances against it; while if other States pursue like courses the difficulties of preserving peace will continue to grow, and as confidence cannot exist nations must re- main armed against a sudden attack. A State which seeks its own aims merely, disregarding the rights of others, disowns the obligations morality imposes, and 202 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS in wronging others it wrongs mankind at large, for it hinders that ethical advance from which, as a branch of mankind, it would itself ultimately profit. What is the State except so many individual men organized for common purposes? Though some Con- tinental writers have treated it as a sort of mystical corporation, greater and wiser than the sum of the citizens who compose it, there is nothing in the State but what its members give it. It is that aggregate of the minds and wills of the citizens to which we give a collective name. Did the individuals when they grouped themselves into the State divest themselves of their moral feelings and bestow none of these feel- ings on the corporate entity? Can they rid themselves of their moral responsibility for what is their action as an organized body? Does responsibility evapo- rate and vanish in the transition from the many citi- zens thought of as individuals to those same citizens thought of as a corporate unity? Every honorable man recognizes what we call the duty he owes to him- self. He would be ashamed of himself if he stole, or lied, or ill-treated his weaker neighbor. Is the State to have no similar sense of duty to itself as an entity with a life continued far beyond the lives of its individual members? If it wrongs others, doing things unworthy of its members as men, does it not wrong both itself and them? On the other hand, if it recognizes a duty to promote the well-being of its members by educating them, giving them good laws, leading them in the path of intellectual and moral progress, may it not be expected as a branch of the human family to make its contribution to the welfare of the other members THE MORALITY OF STATES 203 of that family by itself setting an example of honor- able conduct? It must, of course, be admitted that there are some virtuous acts expected from the good citizen which cannot be required from the State. The rulers of the State are in a certain sense agents and trustees acting on behalf of the people, and they are not entitled to go beyond such authority as the people have entrusted to them. They cannot, for instance, be generous with what is not their own, as an individual may be gener- ous with his own property. I remember once having a conversation with Mr. Gladstone on the subject, and he, than whom no states- man ever took a larger and more human view of na- tional duty, dwelt upon this limitation. Statesmen, he observed, may safely assume that they have a mandate from the people to take any action which would promote the people's interest and may also as- sume that the people will not expect them to do any wrongful act. But they may feel doubts as to making concessions to other States which a broad-minded man might make if only his own interests were concerned. "I may do," he said, "as a private man acts which mo- tives of generosity and liberality suggest, and yet not be entitled to do similar acts as a Minister at the ex- pense of the nation because I am not sure that I am within the authority which the citizens have given me. If I wish to go further I ought to consult Parliament and obtain its authority." Expressions of compassion and acts of charity may have to be restricted within narrower limits than personal sympathy would sug- gest, but in such cases the statesman is free to consult the representative assembly of his country and its 204 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS approval will justify him in believing that the gene- rosity or pity he desires to show will be approved by the sentiment of the people at large. Though these considerations show that those who direct foreign policy cannot be expected to do all that exactly as a conscientious and honorable man would wish to do where his own private interests are concerned, still it may be said that the more the conduct of State policy can conform to that standard of uprightness, candor and fairness which secures re- spect in private life, so much better will be the prospect for good relations between States and for the main- tenance on a high level of the tone of public life in every State. Will a more active participation of the whole body of citizens in the direction of foreign policy tend to raise the standard of conduct which States ought to observe toward one another? I have already expressed the opinion that the citizens will in some cases bring to the consideration of foreign issues a fairer and a broader spirit than that which has hitherto been usual in the diplomacy of any country. But such a spirit cannot always be counted on. Democracies can be grasping and unjust like other kinds of government. He who should draw conclusions from the way in which negotiations have been conducted and treaties framed since 1918, with the apparent acquiescence of some democratic peoples, might doubt whether any more foresight, any more fairness has been shown in these negotiations than belong to the "old diplomacy" of monarchs and oligarchs. Perhaps the chief gain to be expected from a fuller popular control will be found in its fuller publicity. THE MORALITY OF STATES 205 When the ministers of a country have to submit their negotiations and their treaties to the public judgment before the nation is committed to a certain course there may be a better chance of avoiding ignoble or harsh and aggressive action. A people which might be disposed to accept and ratify as a fait accompli what had been already done, even if unworthily done, on its behalf, might refuse to approve, when there had been full opportunity for public discussion, negotiations or treaties likely to lower its credit in the eyes of the world at large. LECTURE VII. METHODS PROPOSED FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES WE HAVE now surveyed the relations of States, the organs and methods by which their relations have been conducted, and the various conditions that affect the application of those methods. It remains to exam- ine the projects that have been devised for improving international relations, that is to say, for avoiding disputes, for settling controversies, for removing sus- picions, for preventing wars, and making preparations for war needless. Suspicions and alarms are the worst enemies of peace. Aggressions by an ambitious State are occasional dangers, and controversies between States must be expected as long as States exist. But jealousy, suspicion, and fear are perpetual dangers, always breeding ill-will. What can be done to get rid of them and to create an atmosphere of good- will with the security which good-will creates? Among the expedients to be considered, we may begin with Conferences and those other institutions for promoting peace which international gatherings have tried to create. Diplomatic conferences or con- gresses, the latter name being generally given to meet- ings of delegates from a large number of Powers, some of them only indirectly interested in the subjects to 206 INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 207 be discussed, have been frequently convoked to ar- range the terms of a treaty after a war in which a number of States have taken part. Such were those held at the close of the Thirty Years' War, of the War of the Spanish Succession at Utrecht, of the Napo- leonic Wars, of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. Recently, however, such meetings have been held when no war had preceded them, in order to deal with mat- ters of common interest and lay down rules for com- mon action. Such were the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, which were to have been followed by another in 1914. Of the congresses I have already mentioned, those of Utrecht, of Vienna in 1814-15, of Berlin in 1878, were meetings of the envoys of States, who thought much more of adjusting the relations of their governments and dividing the spoils of war than of the true interests of the peoples con- cerned. They made a series of bargains which served peace only in so far as they gave effect in formal in- struments to the results which war had produced, the nations being too much exhausted to go on fighting any longer. But they did little for the more distant future because they left the deeper causes of war smouldering beneath the surface. This was eminently true of the Congress of Berlin, at which Bismarck, Disraeli, and Gortschakoff were the leading figures. Its provisions regarding the Balkan regions and the Turkish Empire generally, though applauded at the time by what was called in England the "Imperialist" or "Jingo" party, gave to the countries of Southeastern Europe thirty years of disorder and misery, and con- tained the seeds of the wars of 1912, 1913 and 1914. This Berlin Congress created what used to be called 208 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the Concert of Europe, a sort of combination of five Powers, Germany, Russia, France, Italy, and England, which professed to keep their eye on the Sultan to compel him to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin. But the Powers aforesaid, divided by their jealousies and antagonisms, failed to do this, and when frightful massacres of the Eastern Christians in Asia were perpetrated by Abdul Hamid in 1895 and 1896, some of them, Russia leading under the cynical influence of Prince Lobanoff, prevented England which by that time had awakened to a sense of her duty in the East from interposing to stop these hor- rors. Of the Conference at Paris in 1919, and what was done or left undone there, I have already spoken. 1 The Hague Conferences belong to a different cate- gory. The first of these was called at the instance of Russia, uneasy at the financial strain which mili- tary expenses were throwing upon her, and primarily to consider the question of reducing armaments. Little, if anything, was accomplished in that direction, but in divers ways good work was done both then and in 1907 towards the improvement of international rules of war and otherwise for the common benefit. But these conferences labored under two difficulties. As all civilized States were represented, and were rec- ognized as equal, the least important State had the same right as the greatest to talk at large, and the envoys of some of the smaller States so abused that right as to unduly protract discussion and prevent decisions from being reached till everyone was tired out. Any eloquent declaimer had the chance of his life, and took it, ramping around before an audience 'See Lecture II, ante. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 209 compelled to listen. Unanimity was required to give effect to decisions, so the refusal of even the smallest State could prevent a decision from being made for- mally binding upon all. Moreover, some of the lead- ing Powers, one of them more militaristic in spirit than others had then fully realized, opposed proposals making for the reduction of armaments and the amend- ment of the rules of war, although the majority de- sired those changes. The old deep-rooted propensity to prefer a selfish interest, however slight, to the gen- eral well-being, reappeared, as was indeed to be ex- pected. Nevertheless, the results were, taken as a whole, encouraging. A Court of Arbitration was cre- ated, which was soon after turned to good account. The conception of a World Council to deliberate on behalf of the world took for the first time a concrete form. This method of conference may usefully be resumed, and might perhaps be improved and extended. The lectures of three of my colleagues have given you ex- cellent examples which I need not repeat of the uses to which these conferences can be put; as, for instance, for the purpose of securing raw materials and various forms of motive power to several countries for their common and reciprocal benefit, and for enlarging gen- erally the spheres within which trade can be permitted to become free. In an earlier lecture I dwelt upon the importance of that question for the countries lying along the Danube valleys, and it has even wider extent. So soon as the peoples of each country have become convinced that they have more to gain by one another's prosperity than they have by raising ob- stacles to free intercourse, so soon will the facilities of 210 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS trade throughout the world have their proper chance of being extended. The Conference method is specially suitable to cases in which certain propositions, specially interesting to particular Powers, need to be debated by their repre- sentatives, such, for instance, as international com- munications by water and by land, and arrangements for developing trade between countries which are in special need of one another's products. A conference for that purpose, consisting of the representatives of countries formerly parts of the Austrian Empire, with the addition of Italy, is now sitting. A still more important conference has just been called to meet at Washington within the next three months to resume the effort, defeated at the Hague, to secure an all- round reduction of military and naval armaments. This subject is so vital to the improvement of inter- national relations that a few sentences may be given to it. Navies maintained as a permanent force go back to the eighteenth century, when France, Spain, and England kept small fleets ready for emergencies, but the cost of building and equipping warships was in those days light indeed when compared with our own days. Immense armies came later, and are the creation of the French Revolutionary epoch, which introduced compulsory military service, or, rather, developed it on a far greater scale, for the obligation .to serve in war had existed in most countries, as in England, for instance, from primitive times. A very large propor- tion of the population began to be called to active service, first in France during and after the Revolution, then in the other great countries of the European INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 211 continent. Last of all came modern science, which pro- vided armies and fleets with artillery of a range and variety theretofore undreamt of, adding new means of attack, first in explosives of immense power and there- after in airships and aeroplanes and submarines and sea mines, so that war began to be carried on far above the surface of the land as well as below the surface of the sea. You are, of course, aware that the Ger- mans used a gun against Paris which carried more than fifty miles, and we have heard since then that a gun has been invented though I cannot positively con- firm the story with a range of fire exceeding a hun- dred miles. The notion of what is called a Nation in Arms, a reversion to those primitive days when a whole tribe of Cherokees or Sioux in North America, or a whole clan of Macdonalds and Campbells in Scotland, went out to fight its neighbors, began with Napoleon, who bled France nearly white by repeatedly calling to the colors a large proportion of his subjects. The habit spread to Austria and Prussia and Italy, but was most fully worked out by Prussia. Only Britain and the United States, protected by their position, escaped the contagion, though the principle had been followed by Britain as regards its navy when in the beginning of the last century sailors had to be secured at all costs. Each nation forced the pace for the others. A new conscription law in Russia, intended to augment largely her army, was one of the causes which made Germany hurry into war in 1914, because she deemed the increase of her neighbor's forces a menace likely to become every year more formidable. Each enlargement of a standing army and navy 212 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS meant, at least for some nations, an increase of the national bellicose spirit, and for all of them an in- crease of the military and naval caste called into ex- istence for war purposes. The officers of the army and navy belonged to the wealthier and more educated class, and in some countries, such as Prussia and Austria and, at least as respects the navy (which held a socially superior rank) in Russia also, to the class socially highest, so they exercised a great influ- ence on public opinion as well as on the government. Here was a huge profession, trained for fighting, its mind military rather than civic, its constant preoccu- pation with fighting creating an impatience to fight, while the vigilant eye it kept on the plans of rival countries made it eager to get ahead and be the first to strike. The civil population admired rather than blamed this eagerness, for it indicated an ardor to do what the soldier caste thought to be their duty, and as they were willing to risk their own lives they counted the lives of individual men a small matter in compari- son with the national life of which they believed them- selves to be the saviors. The idea that the safety of the State was to be found in the constant increase of armaments came to possess the whole people, so that even those who did not desire war repeated the old dictum, Si vis pacem para bellum, "If you wish for Peace, prepare for War." This was why European na- tions, though some grumbled, continued to bear the rapidly mounting cost of armaments and munitions. These were regarded as an insurance against war as well as against defeat, and probably even against an attack, for each nation lived in dread of its neighbors and wished to frighten them into peace. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 213 Few Americans seem to have realized the extent to which the terror of a coming war and the idea that every nation must go on increasing its armaments as fast as possible in order to deter its neighbors from attack, had seized hold of the European continent. We felt it in England also, although our insular posi- tion, combined with confidence in our navy, made us take it a little more easily. But on the Continent a traveler could not move without seeming to feel the breath of war in the wind. The national budgets grew fast with the new devices of warfare which scientific invention multiplied, each more costly than its predecessors. It is said that while it now costs many thousands of dollars to cast one of the great naval guns, it costs more than a thousand dollars to fire from one of them a single shot. I will not attempt to tell you how long they are, but when you look into them you are reminded of the Hoosac Tunnel through which we have come to Williamstown. Is there anything in history more tragic than the fact that the power which our knowledge and mastery of the forces of Nature has given us can today be used to do far more to destroy human life within a given space of time than any recent discoveries have enabled us to preserve it? These inventions have in- creased faster in number and efficiency during the recent war than they ever did before, and they are likely to go on increasing so long as wars are expected. Whatever ships one Power builds, whatever guns it casts, other Powers feel bound to match by their own building and casting, for all live in disquiet and all feel that their influence in the world depends on the war strength they possess. Hence, it is only an agree- 214 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ment between the Great Powers that holds out any hope of reducing armies and navies, for no one Power will reduce till assured that the others are doing like- wise. As the greater European countries have already been beggared by the late war, it is plain that they will be ere long ruined by the continuance of expenditure on the present war scale. They ought therefore to welcome the invitation which has proceeded from the United States to meet in a conference on this subject, as that invitation has already been most heartily wel- comed by the people of Britain and of the British Dominions everywhere. Though I possess no expert knowledge that could entitle me to speak with authority on the matter, I may venture to mention some of the questions that will arise when the problem comes to be discussed. The first is: What scale can be fixed for each country as that which its armies, its fleets, and its aircraft, together with the war muntions needed for every branch of war service, shall not in future exceed? Obviously, these will in each case be proportioned primarily to the area and population of the country. But there are also other points to be considered, such as the strength of the frontiers, because frontiers natur- ally defensible require a smaller force to guard them than do those which are open, and the means of com- munication, such as railroads, within the country, en- abling troops to be quickly moved from place to place. Regard must also be had to the amount of danger to be apprehended from any internal disturbances which troops may be needed to repress. Other considerations arise as regards the sea forces, such as the volume of sea commerce to be protected and the need a country INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 215 may have of food imports. A further question follows how far these two fighting services and the air service also are to be dealt with as parts of one defensive force, how far as distinct. Another difficulty arises regarding the term of serv- ice, and the relation to a regular trained army of a militia or of the police, or of a volunteer force such as we instituted hi England in 1859, and the training of a number of officers beyond those needed for the standing rank and file. When Napoleon after the battle of Jena had compelled the Prussian Govern- ment to reduce its regular army, the patriotic spirit of the people gladly came to the help of the govern- ment, which was thereupon allowed to pass through courses of military training successive sets of recruits who thus were turned into effective soldiers, as Na- poleon found to his cost in 1813. The Prussian Gov- ernment was not to be blamed for resorting to this device, seeing that the terms Napoleon imposed had been such as no independent State could be ex- pected to endure. It may interest you to know that the occasion which called for the creation of a volun- teer force in Britain I remember that one-third of the whole number of undergraduates at Oxford volun- teered within the first fortnight was the fear enter- tained of an attack by Louis Napoleon, who was reign- ing 'in France, and was then regarded as the disturber of the peace of Europe. A German Empire had not yet come into being. Another set of problems arises when we ask how the observance of the limits allotted to each country is to be secured. There would be little gained by agreeing upon a reduction to take effect from any given 216 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS moment unless the rule prescribed by the agreement is to be thereafter continuously observed, for increases in any country would forthwith alarm the others. It has been suggested that a sort of Board of Inspection might be created to watch over the fulfillment of un- dertakings made to keep within the limits prescribed, and that the scale agreed upon might be from time to time revised at periodical conferences. But even sup- posing the contracting powers to be willing to submit their action to such a scrutiny, it may be hard to make it effective. Doubtless some kinds of preparation for war cannot easily be concealed The building of battle- ships and battle cruisers, or of Zeppelin airships, if the building of these is resumed, or the casting of huge guns for naval or siege-work would become known and could be stopped if an authority is provided capable of discovering and arresting such departures from the agreement. But might not aeroplanes and submarines and still more machine guns be secretly constructed, at least as respects the standardized parts, which could be quickly fitted together when war was imminent? Explosives could be made in chemical factories with- out attracting attention, because the factories would be kept working for non-military purposes also. It would be still easier to manufacture deadly gases on a great scale, and no engines of war seem more likely to be used in the future with frightful effect. In Europe one hears the soldiers and sailors say that 'the next war will probably be decided by aeroplanes and gas. It has been proposed to forbid the manufacture of munitions of war by private firms in order to pre- vent any capitalists from having a motive to bring war about, and from either provoking ill-feeling be- INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 217 tween nations or getting up war scares to induce gov- ernments to place with them orders for war materials. The danger of such nefarious action upon nations and governments has probably been exaggerated, but sup- posing it to exist and to have the effect attributed to it, it might still continue to operate in the case of firms who make the materials most needed for the manu- facture of munitions, and governments might be dis- posed to accumulate, out of caution for the future, inordinately large stocks of munitions if they had only their own State factories to rely upon and could not in an emergency have recourse to private firms. Some have suggested that the most effective method of limiting expenditure would be an undertaking by each of the contracting countries not to vote more than a prescribed sum of money in every budget for naval and military purposes, for the estimates pre- sented to the legislature and enacted in an Appropria- tion act would show whether this undertaking had been faithfully complied with. To this, however, it has been answered that an unscrupulous government desiring to elude -its engagements could do so by secretly transferring to the purposes aforesaid sums voted by the legislature for some quite different and non-military purposes. It is worth while to indicate some of the difficulties which surround this subject, in order that we may all try to realize beforehand the magnitude of the task which lies before any Conference that attempts to deal with it, and that we may therefore extend to its efforts, as I perceive the American people is doing, all possible sympathy and encouragement. No diffi- culties can be allowed to deter the nations from grap- 218 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS pling with an enterprise of such urgent importance. The moment is opportune, not only because the great European States cannot, without financial ruin, bear the burden which armaments now impose upon them, but also because the greater States, being for the moment exhausted and impoverished, are not likely to take up arms against one another for some years to come. The causes of war do, no doubt, abound in the Old World, but whatever may befall among the smaller States, a period of at least nominal and formal peace between the greater military Powers may well last for eight or ten years at least. Before that period has expired it is possible, and perhaps even probable, that new inventions may have rendered many existing engines of war virtually obsolete. -The huge battleships of the late war, for example, may be then out of date. Even for the cruisers and submarines new designs and methods of arming may have been devised. The same applies to air vessels of every kind, and possibly even to explosives. Already in England we hear high naval authorities urging a complete change in methods of naval warfare. Prudence therefore suggests that it would be foolish to now vote immense sums for gi- gantic vessels of war, costing perhaps more than twenty-five or thirty million dollars each, which might turn out to be of slight value when the time for using them arrived. Armaments, it is truly said, depend upon policy. Every nation's policy ought, if only for financial reasons, to be a policy of peace for years to come. Is it not absurd that the nations which were allies in the Great War, no one of which has any real cause of quarrel with another nor seriously expects an attack from any other, should be making prepara- INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 219 tions against a danger they cannot really expect? And to put the matter on another basis, apart from any sentiment, is it not obvious that the less money a nation throws away now, the more it will have at its disposal if plans for peace should eventually mis- carry, and the mutterings of thunder be again heard on the European horizon? Every one recognizes that in order to give any scheme for the reduction of armaments a fair chance of success it ought to be accompanied by measures calculated to remove all causes of friction that now exist or are likely to come into being. This brings us to the methods which have been proposed for that purpose. These may be classed under five heads, Arbitration, Conciliation, Alliances (offensive and de- fensive), a Federation of the World or so-called Super- State, and a combination of as many States as possible for the preservation and guaranteeing of general peace. Let us briefly examine each of these several methods. Arbitration is the method that has hitherto attracted most attention and has been most successfully applied, so it does not need to be commended to you. Regard* ing its application, however, disputable points have arisen which need consideration when treaties for arbi- tration are being negotiated. The most important of such questions relates to the scope of arbitration. Such treaties as those which were made in Mr. Roosevelt's presidency between the United States and several other Powers, England and France among them, excepted from the obligation to refer a controversy to an Arbitral Court questions of what are called National Honor and Vital Interest. These terms are so vague as greatly to reduce the 220 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS value of the promise to arbitrate. Under them any State can allege, when it pleases, that a particular question is deemed by it to be vital or to affect its honor, and there is no superior authority to decide whether such an allegation is well founded or merely a subterfuge to escape from its obligation. What is meant by the honor of a State? In the old days of duelling "honor" was a term much in vogue, and any imputation made by one gentleman to an- other, such as that of deceit or cowardice, was held to be an insult which must be resented by trying to kill or at least to wound one or other party, and the man insulted who received a mortal wound from a more expert swordsman had the satisfaction of knowing that he died having vindicated his honor. It cannot be intended that if Nicaragua were to impute coward- ice to the United States the United States should go to war with Nicaragua, or that a quarrel between Co- lombia and Ecuador over the ill treatment of the citizens of the one by the government of the other should be withdrawn by either from arbitration be- cause the demand for redress had been refused in in- solent terms. Let me add that it can never be to a nation's honor to repudiate a legal obligation. Similarly the exception of vital interest was de- fended by suggesting that either party might prop- erly refuse to submit to any court the title to a territory it had occupied or the ownership of a piece of land essential to its safety, perhaps because so placed as to threaten its capital. I remember some one jestingly asked whether the United States would be entitled to require from England that she should submit to arbitration her title to the Isle of Wight, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 221 a place much frequented by American tourists, and it was answered that in that case England might invite America to submit to arbitration the question of the ownership of Long Island. If there is any force in the exclusion of cases of this nature (of which the above are extreme illustrations) it would seem better to arrange that the question of what is a vital interest should be referred to a preliminary arbitration rather than that under a term so elastic disputes really fit to be settled by a court should be withdrawn from its competence. One cannot imagine that any court would hold that a nation should be forced to submit to arbitration the possession of its own capital or the surrender to another country of its only access to the open sea. Though any arbitration treaty is better than none, still every limitation on a general treaty is regrettable, for it implies the possibility that the parties may have recourse to war. It is to be hoped that when the habit of entrusting decisions to an impartial court has spread and been approved by its success, States will no longer fear to bind themselves to apply it in every controversy for which it is suitable. These cases to which legal methods of settlement can be fitly applied have been called Justiciable, a term which I shall often have to use, and have been defined as follows: "Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question of international law, as to the existence of any fact which, if estab- lished, would constitute a breach of an international obligation, or as to the nature and extent of the reparation to be made for any such breach." These are cases which every one admits are suitable for arbitral tribunals. But before proceeding to dis- putes for which the process of judicial determination 222 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS is not suited, let me note a few objections which have been taken to a general promise to arbitrate. One is that it limits the freedom of a State. Well, of course, it does. So does every treaty. No State can expect any other State to accept an obligation unless it as- sumes for itself some corresponding obligation to that other. Each enlarges its own power or secures its own safety by the promises it gets from other States, and gives in return a promise which to the same extent re- duces its own absolute liberty of action. But the gam which accrues to both through the security obtained outweighs whatever loss is incurred by parting with full liberty of action in one particular direction. More is won by assuring peace and justice than is lost by renouncing the use of force; and that is why the bar- gain is a good one. Some have argued that a legisla- ture, or a branch of a legislature, ought not to bind itself to consent to arbitrate all questions of a pre- scribed nature which may arise in the future, because at some future time a case may arise which it does not wish to arbitrate. Obviously, however, a promise made for the future has no value if the maker of the promise reserves a right not to abide by it. The use of a gen- eral treaty is to create the sense of security and enable friendship to grow up between peoples because they have solemnly renounced the thought of fighting one another. The obligation is, of course, only a moral ob- ligation, not legally enforceable, but no self-respecting country would stain its honor by repudiating such an obligation. The provisions made for arbitration by the last Hague Conference contemplated a body of judges named by the States who had accepted the scheme, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 223 from which body a Court was to be selected for each particular dispute by the parties concerned. The new Court to be constituted under the plan more recently framed is to consist of a fixed number of permanent judges. This seems a preferable plan, but it will be necessary so to compose this permanent body as to give no advantage to any country, or closely allied group of countries, by allowing it to have any pre- ponderating influence in the court. The success of the scheme will largely depend on the quality of the persons selected -to .fill the court. There are none too many in Europe of the quality needed. Excellent as is the method of Arbitration by an international court, there are many cases to which it is not applicable, that is to say, cases which do not fall within the definition already given of "justi- ciable disputes." These cases are not only numerous, but far more troublesome than those that are "justi- ciable," because inasmuch as strict principles of law, or even the more elastic principles of what English and American lawyers call Equity, cannot be applied to them, it is difficult for the public opinion of other countries, or of honest men in the countries directly affected, to judge of the merits without a full knowl- edge of all the facts. Where facts have become known and there is any clear principle applicable to them it is only an arrogant or audacious State that will refuse to settle them either by arbitration or by diplomatic methods. Where the absence of any such principle makes arbitration unavailable, discussion between governments may become sharper, and the temper of peoples angrier and hastier. Whoever takes up any history of modern Europe and runs through the wars 224 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS which have broken out since the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, will find that comparatively few were susceptible of arbitration by a Court on legal principles. I will enumerate those which occur to my mind: The war between the Kingdom of Sardinia and Austria in 1848-49 and the war between Russia (which had come to the support of Austria) and Hungary in 1849 had nothing to do with legal questions suscep- tible of arbitration. This is also true of the war commonly called the Crimean War, between Russia on one side and France and England on the other in 1853. Of the points in- volved few could be called justiciable, and those were of slight consequence. The interests which France and England supposed themselves to have in defend- ing Turkey and arresting the advance southward of Russia were political interests and could not have been settled by a court of arbitral justice. Similarly the war of 1859 between France and Austria was waged on purely political grounds, Louis Napoleon desiring for various reasons, some of them domestic, to turn the Austrians out of Italy. The war between France and Germany in 1870-71 sprang out of fears on both sides which were quite apart from legal grounds of controversy. The same remark applies to the war of 1877 between Russia and Turkey, although certain legal questions as to Turkey's breach of her treaty engagements might have been adduced as a special justification of Rus- sia's action and so treated as justiciable issues. The war between Russia and Japan in 1904 arose from claims and projects and suspicions between the countries not susceptible of legal determination. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 225 This was even more true of the war between Serbia and Bulgaria in 1885, and of the three following Bal- kan wars, that of Greece against Turkey in 1897, that of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece against Turkey in 1912, and that of Serbia and Greece against Bulgaria in 1913. It is also true of the war of Italy against Turkey in 1909, for which it was thought scarcely worth while to advance a legal casus belli. Little, if anything, was said about arbitration in the quarrel between the United States and Spain which led to the Cuban War of 1898, and the main questions involved could hardly be deemed justiciable. It need hardly be remarked that so far as Russia and France were concerned the war which broke out in 1914 between them and Germany could not have been averted by any judicial proceedings, although some of the issues which brought England and subse- quently the United States into that conflict did involve questions of international law. Against these cases not suitable for arbitration we have to set only two which might have been referred to arbitration, the war between the Germanic Con- federation and Denmark in 1864, which originated in a dispute regarding the succession to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and, possibly, the subsequent war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, this latter, however, being really rather a political quarrel arising from deep seated grounds than a controversy turning on legal questions. To these may be added the war between England and the two South African republics in 1899. Here one of the chief issues involved, that of the suzerainty which the British Government claimed over the Transvaal, was a legal question as 226 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS to the interpretation of treaties, and the British Gov- ernment, unfortunately, refused to refer it to arbitra- tion because they contended that the Transvaal was not a Sovereign State, and therefore not entitled to demand arbitration. It would have been better to have waived that point, which was not of real value to the English case as a whole, the merits of which this is not the place to discuss. Out of the sixteen wars I have enumerated as fall- ing within this period, only the three last mentioned, or perhaps only two of those three could, so far as it is now possible to judge, have been settled by an Arbitral Tribunal, because the causes and issues were political. Evidently, then, some other method besides that of judicial determination is required for the pre- vention of wars. It need hardly be said that the value of arbitra- tion is to be estimated not by the number of cases for which its methods may appear to have been un- suited, but rather by those cases for which it is suited, and especially by those in which it has either pre- vented a war that seemed likely to arise, or in which it has settled questions which, even though not such as would have led to war, were disturbing the mutual good will and friendly relations of peoples. Among such questions, it is enough to refer to those disposed of in the "Alabama" Claim's arbitration at Geneva in 1871 and in the arbitration at the Hague of the old controversy over the Newfoundland fisheries (1910). This alternative method is that of Conciliation or Mediation. The latter name is given to the action of a third State, friendly to both of the disputant States, which invites both to accept its good offices to INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 227 help in settling the dispute. It is a method that has sometimes proved useful, but there is not always a suitable mediator at hand whom both parties will trust. Hence a plan of larger scope came to be con- sidered, viz., that of creating a permanent body of persons of special knowledge, mature judgment, and wide experience, selected from different nations with a view to their impartiality and personal authority as well as to the other qualities aforesaid, who should constitute a permanent Council of Conciliation to take cognizance of all such international controversies that might arise as appeared not likely to be settled by the ordinary diplomatic methods. The idea of apply- ing Conciliation methods when those of Arbitration were not easily applicable was to some extent embodied in a treaty made between the United States and the British Government in 1909 which set up a Commis- sion for the settlement of any disputes that might arise between the United States and Canada. 1 It also found expression in treaties made by the United States with Britain and France, as well as with some other States, in 1914. These treaties provided that when disputes arose between the nations concerned which diplomatic methods had failed to settle, and which were not covered by existing agreements for arbitra- tion, the parties should not declare war or begin hos- tilities until a certain period had elapsed, and that within that prescribed period the dispute should be referred for investigation and report to an interna- tional commission, constituted by the terms of the treaty. 1 This commission has worked smoothly and successfully ever since its establishment in 1909. 228 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The principle of these treaties is obviously capable of more general application. If a considerable number of States were to join in a general agreement to apply the principle by setting up a permanent Council of Conciliation, such a body, being created by many States, would enjoy a higher authority and wider in- fluence fhan could belong to any international com- mission either created for a particular case, or by two contracting parties only who established it as between themselves. Under such a scheme as I have outlined the Council would be at liberty not only to investigate but to include in its report, if it thought fit to do so, specific recommendations for the settlement of the disputes it had examined. The advantages claimed for the method may be appreciated if we turn back to consider and reflect upon the causes which have led to those modern wars which I have already enumerated, and on the circum- stances attending their outbreak. One of these causes has been the rapidity with which nations have allowed their governments to hurry them into war. Whenever hostilities seem to be approaching, each of the antagonists expects a great advantage by being the first to launch its armies and fleets against the other. This was seen in 1870, when Germany gained by being ready sooner than France was to deliver a tremendous blow. It ap- peared again in 1904, when Japan's attack on Russia followed instantaneously on her declaration of war. Moreover the extreme tension which the approach of war produces raises the temper of peoples to fever heat. It leaves statesmen no leisure for reflection and indeed impairs in them the capacity for cool and clear INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 229 thinking. Everybody is excited, most people are be- wildered. During those terrible ten days that elapsed between the delivery of Austria's 48 hours' ultimatum to Serbia and the declarations of war between Russia, Germany and France in the beginning of August, 1914, telegrams were speeding so swiftly to and fro between Petersburg, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Lon- don, crossing one another like fiery arrows hurtling through the air, that a deliberate consideration of the numerous proposals and counter-proposals was scarcely possible. Had the negotiations, as in the old days, been conducted by written dispatches, the chances of a peaceful settlement would have been greater. Now that the telegraph has superseded the post, it is only by imposing a formal treaty obligation to postpone actual hostilities that time can be secured for con- ciliation to have its chance. Turning from the question of time to the actual issues involved, let us revert to the thirteen wars which I have mentioned as wars to which methods of conciliation might have been but were not applied. Most of the disputes to which those thirteen were due could probably have been adjusted had they been submitted to an examination by a competent and impartial Council of Conciliation. Some at least of the wars against Turkey may be left out of account, because she is an uncivilized State, with a government stupid as well as savage. Yet both in 1877 and in 1897 war might probably have been averted if the matters involved had been handled before the Turks were committed to resistance. I omit also the war between France and Germany in 1870, for the causes were deep-seated and the differences seemed irrecon- 230 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS cilable. But the Crimean War of 1853, into which England drifted without any clear view of the real issues or even of her own motives, and the war of 1859 between France and Austria, and the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885, and that between the United States and Spain in 1898, and that between Russia and Japan in 1904, and the deplorable Balkan War of 1913, and that between England and the two South African Re- publics, might well have been averted had there been tune for defining and reporting upon the real issues, for endeavoring to arrange compromises, for focussing the opinion of the world upon the merits. I do not at- tempt to discuss the war of 1914, but may observe that the causes of strife which seem to now exist as between those minor European States whose condi- tions are unstable might be greatly lessened and per- haps even removed if a method of investigation such as has just been outlined were applied to them. Let me sum up briefly the advantages that may be ex- pected from the method of Conciliation by way of investigation, report and suggestions for settle- ment. In the first place, this process, by interposing a delay before hostilities begin, gives time for passions to cool and reason to have its perfect work. Secondly, it compels each State to define the grounds on which its claims rest, disengaging the minor from the really significant, and it will sometimes bring into a clear light weaknesses even in these latter. Thirdly, it enables public opinion in each of the States concerned to have an opportunity of seeing whither, i. e., towards peace or towards war their governments are leading them, and of expressing their INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 231 judgment as to whether the causes alleged justify a resort to arms. Fourthly, it supplies to other nations the materials which may enable them to form a judgment on the points of issue between the disputant nations and on the broad aspects of the case. How important the judgment of other nations may be was shown by the incessant and untiring efforts of Germany, France and England to win public opinion to their side in the recent war. They all appealed to the moral judgment of mankind, recognizing that the civilized world has a judgment, and admitting that moral principles have something to do with that judgment. Could such a judgment have been expressed by a competent and impartial international authority before hostilities be- gan, might not things have gone differently? Fifthly, where national pride and vanity are in- volved, as they always are, concessions and compro- mises become more attainable because a nation, if not bent upon war at all risks, can more easily make concessions and accept compromises when these are pressed upon it by an authority which is impartial and respected. Every one of us knows how much easier it is to yield when one yields to the advice of those whose judgment and counsel deserve respect. The imputa- tion of having yielded out of cowardice is a reproach which no high-spirited people will bear. It is not easy to say how such a council of concilia- tion as has been outlined should be created. Those who suggested it conceived that the countries which entered by treaty into a combination for preserving peace, such as that already suggested, should each appoint its own representatives on the proposed Coun- 232 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS cil and should appoint them for a term of years, so that the Council should always be complete and in being, and that its members should not be exposed to the charge of having been appointed for the purposes of a particular dispute and because of their supposed views upon it. It was also thought better that the members, though of course they would be in touch with their respective governments and aware of the sentiments of their respective nations, should not act under constant instructions from their governments, but rather deliberate and vote freely, as members of a court of arbitral justice would do, according to their conscience and judgment, in the interest of jus- tice and of general peace. They must of course be per- sons of sufficient capacity and reputation to have in- fluence with the Council and also to have in their respective countries an influence and weight sufficient to insure a fair consideration in those countries of any proposals with which they might associate themselves. Such persons are of course not numerous, but they exist in all civilized countries anywhere and any of you could name some persons in the United States who possess the qualifications prescribed. I need hardly add that the representatives of a country would not bind its government. The Council contemplated would have no executive power. That would be retained by the governments. Its aims and function would be to convey to the public opinion of nations in general for the whole civilized world is interested in the main- tenance of a general peace the views of an instructed and impartial body as to the real merits of a controversy, and as to that particular solution of an urgent problem that is most in accordance with INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS AND DISPUTES 233 equity and the general interest. To do this honestly and efficiently, its members ought not to take an ex- clusively national view nor be mere agents of their governments. The Treaty of Versailles, in its plan for preventing war by the action of two bodies a Council and an Assembly representing many nations, took a different view. Under its provisions the members of those two bodies are distinctly delegates of their respective countries, delegates who are understood to ex- press the views of those governments, and some of whom are Ministers in those governments. I express, of course, no view as to the respective merits of the two schemes, but am content merely to indicate a plan somewhat different from that of the Versailles cove- nant, and to leave it for your consideration. The two schemes are in some points not incompatible, and some of the features of that here outlined might be fitted in- to the Versailles scheme. Though that plan is more complete, because it goes further, efforts at com- promise change and reconcilement would sometimes be more acceptable if they came from a body which is detached from the executive governments of the States represented, because any States asked to yield and accept a compromise might be more disposed to do so if the request came from a body which is not directly controlled by the governments of the other States. I have not dealt with the question how either the decisions of an Arbitral Tribunal or the recommenda- tions of a Council of Conciliation should be enforced, nor even with the preliminary question how the States that have bound themselves by treaty to submit their 234 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS disputes either for decision to the Tribunal or for in- vestigation and report to the Council can be compelled to fulfill the obligations they have undertaken. These questions, being the largest and most difficult of all, for they have been supposed to affect the sovereignty and absolute independence of States, require to be considered apart from the particular methods to which I have been calling your attention. LECTURE VIII OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR WE HAVE seen, as all who have considered the sub- ject have seen, that valuable as the methods of arbi- tration and conciliation are for lessening the risk that unsettled disputes should lead to war, cases may still be looked for in which States will not turn to arbitra- tion nor accept conciliation, or in which a recourse to these methods may fail, because the decision of a tri- bunal or the recommendations of a conciliating author- ity are rejected. If this happens, to what means of protection are States to resort if they wish to save themselves from attack by a stronger nation or a group of nations leagued together by the hope of gaining territory, or some other advantage, by superior force? In cases of this nature protection has usually been sought in defensive alliances by which two or more States pledge themselves to stand together united for reciprocal aid; each undertaking to call out its armies and fleets against any enemy who should made an unprovoked attack upon any member of the Alliance. Such alliances have in time past done much to protect small communities against destruction by greater neighbors, and out of them grew up in the Middle Ages such confederations as those of the Hanseatic merchant towns and of the Swiss cantons and cities. So our own time saw the alliance of France and Britain 235 236 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS against Russia during the Crimean War, and subse- quently the so-called League of the Three Empires (Drei Kaiser Bund), Russia, Germany and Austria, for reciprocal defense; and after that league had come to an end there was seen the alliance of Russia and France designed to protect each against possible dan- gers from Germany, and thereafter the counter-alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy which ended when Italy withdrew from it in 1915. Another example was af- forded by the league between Argentina, Chile and Brazil against Paraguay, then ruled by an unscrup- ulous disturber of the peace of South America. Tem- porary safety may be and often has been secured by arrangements of this kind, which may be perfectly legitimate when maintained for purposes purely de- fensive. But the system, regarded as a means of pre- serving permanent peace, is open to grave objections. Alliances are unstable, and may fail when they are most needed, because the interest of one or other party to the agreement may change, or because one or other may disapprove the diplomatic action of the other, or because the control of the policies of a State may pass from the hands of a man, or a cabinet, or a political party which the allied States trusted at the moment when the treaty was concluded into other hands that inspire no confidence. Bismarck relied so little on the alliance he had concluded with Austria that he effected in 1884 what was called a Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, keeping it secret from Austria. Britain, after having through the mouth of one minis- ter proclaimed the advantages of a "splendid isolation," thereafter entered into a secret treaty with Italy, which afterwards expired ; and after considering various tend- OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 237 ers of affection from Germany, she ultimately ar- ranged her differences with France, and disposed of the chief questions that had disturbed her relations with Russia. Thus was created the so-called Triple Entente, an understanding which did not amount in point of form to an alliance but came near it in sub- stance. Alliances between strong Powers excite and prolong jealousies, rivalries, and suspicions among other States. Though they may purport to be purely de- fensive, no one can tell what secret provisions con- templating encroachment upon others they may con- tain. They are apt to breed an aggressive spirit, be- cause a State which has powerful associates standing beside it or behind it, is tempted to take an arrogant or domineering attitude towards other States. The alarm created in other States induces them to form counter-combinations, which, though professedly for defense only, produce in each of the counter-combining States the same moral effect as I have just noted. Each combination becomes more confident in its strength, and more unyielding in its attitude. When anywhere in the world questions arise which interest a number of States those which belong to the one combination are apt to act together therein, irre- spective of the general merits of the particular case. This happened with the Triple Entente and with the Triple Alliance. For some years before 1914, whenever Russia or France contested any claim or opposed any wish of Austria or Germany, the other member of the combination was expected to give dip- lomatic support to the contention of its own partner and to resist the contention of any of the partners 238 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS in the Triple Alliance. Such a situation gave rise to ill feeling. When any contention grows into a quarrel between a member of one alliance and a member of the other, it is likely to become the common quarrel of all the partners in both combinations. In 1914 Russia was involved in hostilities with Austria by the latter's threat to Serbia, which Russia had taken under her wing. Russia drew in France, as her ally, and thereupon France drew in England, as a sort of partner, though not formally an ally, while Austria drew in Germany, her intimate adviser and backer in the crisis, and Germany brought in Turkey, which she already had been making a sort of dependent ally, and whose leading ministers she had enlisted in her service by private influences of a kind familiar in the East. Thirdly, Alliances, since they rest upon armed force, dispose nations to think in terms of armed force. The obligation of each allied nation is to maintain fleets and armies and all engines of war sufficient not only to strengthen itself but to enable it do its duty to its partner, and it keeps urging its partner to maintain costly armaments at the highest point of efficiency. Any proposal made in the representative assembly of one country to reduce military or naval appropriations is treated as a failure to fulfill the country's duty to the Alliance ; and that militaristic spirit which regards Force as the only source of safety and is ready to chal- lenge the rest of the world is fed and stimulated. Alliances have been for centuries past regarded as the only practical securities for any country against external dangers. Already since the making at Paris of the so-called Peace Treaties, we have seen three new States, Rumania, Yugo-Slavia and Czecho-Slovakia, OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 239 forming an alliance between themselves against Hungary. They are believed to be trying to induce Poland to enter this so-called Petite Entente. Latvia, Esthonia and Lithuania have, it is said, been nego- tiating with one another for a similar alliance, which in the case of three States at present so weak seems a natural expedient for mutual protection against at- tacks from Bolshevik Russia. The alliance of two governments that might seem so naturally antago- nistic as the Soviet Republic of Russia and the so- called "Kemalists" or Nationalist Turks, shows how far a common hatred of other States can go to draw together Powers which have nothing else in common, and which, once they had vanquished the forces op- posed to them, would begin to contend against one another for the control of the Transcaucasian countries. Impressed by the objections to the plan of safety through alliances, since it is a system liable to arouse suspicions while it stands, and possibly to break down when it is most needed and feeling also some dis- satisfaction with Arbitration and Conciliation because they may fail to settle disputes between nations one or other of which does not really desire an amicable set- tlement, some enthusiasts conceive that peace can be secured only by the creation of an authority includ- ing and standing above all existing States, which shall do for those existing States what the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary do for individual citizens in each civilized State. They argue that just as Law and Order were by degrees established in each country by the will of the people, and when established were able by the action of courts and police to administer justice and suppress violence, so the same process must 240 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS be applied to States, which are to be regarded as mem- bers of a world commonwealth just as individual citi- zens are members of their own State. The advocates of this plan appeal to the United States of North America as an example. If so they argue thirteen independent commonwealths were found willing in 1787-90 to forego a part of their sovereignty in order to establish a union which should prevent strife between them and ensure them against attacks from without, why should not the independent States now existing in a modern and more advanced world seek in a like union a remedy against the dangers which threaten a return to barbarism? This idea of a Super-State embracing the whole world, a Federation of peoples ruled by a Parliament of Man, appeals to the imagina- tion. Its vast scale is fascinating. It holds out a hope of incalculable blessings. But it is a phrase, and only a phrase, a phrase which has no definite relation to anything in the actual world of our time. No writer familiar with the initial working of govern- ments, has, so far as I know, presented it in a con- crete form by showing through working out of details, what the organization and government of a World Federation would be in practice. Schemes there have been, but either vague and viewy, or based merely on the suggestion that the federal system of the United States might be imitated on a world scale. Those who cite that example ought to try to recommend their suggestion by comparing the conditions under which the American Federation was created with those which exist today in the world as a whole and showing that such a comparison supports the plan. Does it not rather dissuade from the attempt OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 241 to imitate? The thirteen States of 1788 were no doubt independent. But their citizens spoke the same lan- guage, had the same social usages, cherished the same historical traditions, lived under the same institutions, were, in fact, except that they had no common govern- ment (save an ineffective assembly of delegates) al- ready a Nation, a branch of the ancient European nation whose authority they had disclaimed. In order to realize the difficulties involved in creating a World State on the American pattern, compare with the facts of that American case the facts which a survey of our planet presents, and consider the obstacles which an attempt to construct a World State would have to over- come. I waive for the moment the preliminary ques- tion whether the nations of the world are (as at present advised) disposed to resign so much of their inde- pendence as would be needed to create the projected Super-State, since whatever supremacy or sovereign control was given to it would necessarily be withdrawn from them. The natural differences between the various branches of mankind, differences in race which are expressed in physical and mental characteristics, in language, in habits of life due to climatic and other kinds of en- vironment, are so marked as to make it seem impos- sible that they should be able to understand one an- other sufficiently to work harmoniously with one an- other in the same political body by the same methods. The historical past of these peoples has been so dis- similar as to add immensely to those differences Nature has created. Only a few have enjoyed freedom and self-government for some generations or centuries. Most have lived under monarchies, sometimes in small 242 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS tribal units where tribal opinion had a certain influ- ence, others under autocracies ruling either through bureaucratic officials or through local oligarchies. Some of these peoples are so obviously unfit to share in a system of free government as are the tribes of tropical Africa and tropical South America that they could not be admitted as States but only as protected wards of a World Federation, like the Igorotes or the Moros in the Philippines or the Kalmuks in South- western Siberia. All of those whose forefathers lived under autocratic rule have an utterly different set of ideas and traditions regarding government from those of the free peoples, and it would take several, perhaps many, generations to enable them to assimi- late those traditions. The level of education among even the civilized peoples is much higher in some than in others. Compare Mexico with the United States. How would the differences affect the working of a World Federation? Assume that it would be, as most of its advocates would desire, democratic in its consti- tution, based on a very wide, perhaps universal, suf- frage. If the governing authorities, Executive and Legislative, were chosen by popular vote, the votes of the Chinese people would constitute about one- fourth of the whole, those of the Chinese and East Indians and Russians, taken together, at least one-half of the whole. Of course no rational man would pro- pose a scheme which would give such results, but what- ever other scheme might be adopted for assigning a certain proportion of votes to each people, or to each State, under arrangements permitting these votes to be cast by the government of that State, would be open to serious objections, raise endless controversies, and OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 243 give rise to constant attempts, once the Super-State were constituted, to alter its basis, for no civilized people would consent to a system of taxation imposed upon its citizens by the votes of poorer but far more numerous peoples. If each component State were required to have a free popular constitution, as every State in the Ameri- can Union is now required, such constitutions, forced upon peoples unfit to handle them, would work badly. If, on the other hand, each State were allowed to have whatever form of government it pleased, the constant revolutions in some States, and the bad character of the governments they set up, would make it difficult for orderly civilized governments to get on with them, and would throw the machinery of the Federation out of gear. How would the national government of the United States have worked for the last hundred years had the twelve Latin American so-called republics that now exist in and around the Caribbean Sea been States of the Union? If the backward peoples were allowed to exert their power of numbers, either by the direct voting of their citizens en masse or by the number of representatives assigned to them on the basis of popu- lation in the ruling general assembly (or assemblies) of the Federation, the result might be to throw back instead of to advance civilization. It need hardly be added that able adventurers, men with popular gifts but without scruples, would be tempted to seek their political fortunes as leaders in the backward peoples, among whom their arts would have full scope. Even in the nations that have the best political intelligence and have had the longest political experi- ence, popular government has disclosed many defects 244 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and finds itself still faced by many difficulties. How much harder to work a vast democracy which included the untrained races! The parts of any structure must be sound before they can be put together to make a sound whole. A World State rent by a struggle of classes such as threatens to rend in twain not a few civilized nations might be more formidable than even the class strife we now perceive in those nations. Some critics may add that the men needed to work so gi- gantic a machine do not exist, and that no means of discovering or producing them has been suggested. Such men, as has been truly said by many voices, did not appear when they were sadly wanted to recon- struct a shattered Europe at the end of the Great War. Yet the task of comprehending and dealing with all the numerous and intricate questions that would confront a Supreme World-Legislature must prove incomparably heavier. Let me digress for a moment to observe that the problem which the modern world now presents is far different from that which men sought to solve six centuries ago by the recognition of one supreme di- vinely appointed government for the small European world they knew. The World State which shone like a bright vision before the imagination of medieval think- ers and of poets like Dante had a basis which is now entirely wanting. That Christian realm was to find its spiritual head in the Pope and its secular head in the Emperor. Such a realm which, be it remembered, then did actually exist, so far as regarded ecclesiastical affairs, though only in a vague semi-legal sense as re- gards secular affairs, rested upon, as respects the larger part of Europe, an existing religious unity and upon a OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 245 firm belief in a Divine Commission given to these two Heads. Nothing of the kind exists now. There are in our far larger world many religions, and one of the strongest is fiercely anti-Christian, while religious differences and antipathies divide even peoples nom- inally Christian. The ties of faith and sentiment which bound the peoples together in the thirteenth century are wanting. These and many other difficulties that stand in the way of creating a World State with any prospect of success would present themselves in slightly different forms and degree according to the particular scheme adopted. But most, if not all, of them would be sure to arise in any scheme, because the elements of the World State would be too heterogeneous for a real unity. Institutions which would be fit for some of the members would be unfit for the rest. Any such scheme must assume a virtue, an intelligence, a civic spirit, a flexibility and adaptability and capacity for steady moral and intellectual progress of which few signs are now discernible. Adding these considerations to the patent fact, already mentioned, that the most advanced nations would not sacrifice their present in- dependence in order to try any such experiment, the notion must be regarded as a dazzling vision of the far- off possible future rather than as a remedy for the present troubles of the world. If we have found that alliances, meant to secure against war the nations that make them, have proved more often causes of strife than remedies against it, if we have been obliged to dismiss the conception of a Super-State as outside the range of practical politics, what remains? By what other means is mankind to 246 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS protect itself against such storms as that which broke upon it in 1914? Could an alliance be made by a large number of States, directed, not against other States but against war itself, an alliance which should provide means for averting war? Can States be in- duced to renounce just so much of their unlimited sovereignty and self-centered isolation as is involved in pledging themselves not to resort to war until all possible pacific means of settling disputes of every kind whatsoever have been exhausted, can they be perhaps induced to go even further in endeavoring to prevent any State that will not try those means from lighting a fire that may spread till it involves those who stood, or tried to stand, outside the quarrel? Such a Combination of States would begin by de- veloping and extending the scope of the methods of Arbitration and Conciliation. These two methods may be made to cover every sort of dispute that can arise between States. The dispute, if it is of the kind called justiciable, would go to a judicial tribunal administer- ing the principles and rules of international law in a broadly equitable spirit. If not justiciable, it would be a matter for Conciliation, i. e., for finding a settle- ment which the parties might be willing to accept because it gave to each of them terms which fairness suggested, and which would best contribute to the future contentment and good-will of the parties con- cerned as well as to the maintenance of general peace. I have already touched upon both these methods, so we may proceed to consider what are the essentials such a Combination of States ought to possess and what the problems which arise in trying to create it. The time at my disposal does not suffice for a discus- OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 247 sion of the arguments, but it may help the concen- tration of your thoughts if I indicate the salient issues. First of all, such a Combination ought to consist of a large number of States, so large that the special interests of each would be overruled by that which is the general interest of all, i. e., the maintenance of world peace. It should include States so important that they would possess not only material strength but also a volume of educated opinion sufficient to constitute a moral force. The larger the number of such States entering the Combination, the stronger would it be. Some few independent States have lagged so far behind in the path of civilized and responsible government as to seem hardly fit for admission, but perhaps it would be better to admit them and let them profit by their intercourse with their elder brothers. There are advantages, no doubt, in having all States members. The States forming the Combina- tion should be prepared, whatever have been their previous relations, whether friendly or hostile, to show, not only by their public opinion but also in the action of their respective governments, a sincere wish for peace and an earnest desire to further it by themselves always resorting to Arbitration and Conciliation as the methods for adjusting their own disputes with other nations. Now let us consider some of the questions that pre- sent themselves when we think how the Combination desired can be constructed and workr-t Aristotle has remarked that in approaching any subject one ought to begin with the difficulties that surround either a theory or a practical project. 1 To examine these at 1 Meyu7TOJ' TO & diropew. 248 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the outset, to anticipate the objections that may be taken to the doctrine or scheme, is the safest way of arriving at sound conclusions which will stand fire. What should be the organs by which a Combination will conduct its business? A chief ami is to avoid by a direct interchange of views the delays and mis- understandings which arise hi diplomatic correspond- ence between a number of States. There must be therefore not only a permanent Tribunal to hear and decide justiciable controversies, but a Council of some sort to apply methods of conciliation to disputes not fit for legal determination. Should there be for this purpose more than one directing body? If only one, it must be small enough for free and familiar discus- sion between its members; yet if it be small, only a few States can be represented on it, and those not represented may complain of their exclusion and so lose confidence in the scheme. This has led to the advocacy of a second body in which all States can be represented, and which may be allowed to cooperate with the ruling Council by way of suggestion or of criticism, or perhaps of review. To discuss in detail the distribution of functions between the two bodies if two be deemed necessary would involve a longer discussion than can be attempted here. What should be the relations of the members of the body or bodies aforesaid to the governments of the States they represent? The Covenant contained in the Treaty of Versailles makes them delegates acting under instructions. A Council so formed might prove to be merely the Foreign Offices of the various States under another name. A slightly different plan, outlined in the last preceding lecture, would give them more hide- OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 249 pendence and allow them a discretion in reporting on facts and recommending solutions. Under that plan, however, the views and recommendations of the con- ciliation council would not bind their governments, since they would not be mere instructed delegates. Though these recommendations might be all the more likely to find general acceptance if they did not pro- ceed from the governments of the States constituting the combination, the fact that they were not con j elusive would, when questions arose as to the action proper to be taken, involve further consultations, at least between the governments, or those particular governments which had been entrusted with the func- tion of deciding on the right kind of action. There are advantages and defects in both plans; and it may even deserve to be considered whether there might not be advantages in having both a body created for conciliation independent of the governments and also a small council representing the governments to de- liberate upon executive action. Should the voting power of the States which are parties to the combination be equal for all States, large and small alike, or should they have votes in proportion to their respective populations and strength? Inequality would give rise to complaints from the smaller States, but equality would separate power from responsibility, things which ought always to go together. It would be absurd to provide that when a question of executive action arose Ecuador should have the same weight as Brazil, Rumania the same weight as France. Should unanimity be required for any, and, if so, for what decisions? Such a requirement would often 250 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS prevent executive decisions from being reacneo, yet it would be hard to expect a State which might be ex- posed to special risks by joining in executive action to join in that action against its own wish. All these problems relate to the organization of the Combination for deliberative and for executive pur- poses. Further questions have been raised which cannot pass unnoticed. I will try to answer each briefly. One is: Can the contemplated Combination be pre- vented from falling under the influence of two or three, or more, of the greater Powers? The reply seems to be that a proper organization of the Com- bination ought to prevent and would prevent such a contingency. A second question is: Can each and every one of the Powers be expected to discharge its obligations faith- fully; that is, if I may use a familiar phrase, "to play up"? This is a question no man can answer, but there is reason to believe that public opinion and the sense of common interest might succeed in inducing each member to do its duty loyally, especially when a closer intercourse between the States had accustomed them to work together, and when the very existence of the combination had begun to form that public opinion of the world to which in the last resort we must look. A disloyal member would soon begin to suffer for its disloyalty. Ought the Combination, in its effort to prevent quarrels from arising between its members, go so far as to guarantee to each member the territory and the commercial advantages it now enjoys under treaties? We may answer this pertinent but most difficult ques- OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 251 tion by observing that, however desirable it may be to avert quarrels, quarrels must be expected wherever injustice and actual hardships produce well-grounded discontent in any people. Unfortunately there exists today in many parts of the world much discontent that is well grounded. The unwise or unjust arrangements embodied in nearly all of the recent treaties have pro- longed or aggravated such discontents in some regions and have created them in others; while the provisions made for the protection of minorities are not sufficient to remove those discontents. Any guarantee of a status quo ought therefore to be accompanied by ample provisions for an examination of the existing causes of these discontents and their removal. This may seem a heavy task, but it must be undertaken if a permanent peace, and good-will, the foundation of peace, is to be secured. The sooner it is undertaken the better, or things will go from bad to worse; and a Combination such as we have been considering is the fittest body to undertake it. It is here that the work of enquiry and reconciliation will find its appropriate and most beneficial field of action; it is here that the participa- tion in the proposed Combination of peace-loving States who have nothing to gain or lose but can ap- proach these thorny issues in a spirit of impartial justice, can render inestimable services to a distracted world, lying under the shadow of a great catastrophe. There remains the question of how and when the decisions of a court of arbitration or of a body charged with conciliation, whatever its form and scope may be, shall be enforced against a State which refuses to use either method, or, having accepted one or the other, refuses to abide by the decisions delivered or to follow 252 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS the recommendations made. Arbitration will settle a great many disputes. Conciliation, backed by an en- lightened public opinion which has the facts and the recommendations before it for the fullest publicity is indispensable will settle many more. But the pos- sible, though improbable, case of a recalcitrant State must be faced. Two methods of compulsion have been suggested. One is that of a general boycott of the offending State, a sort of pacific outlawry, cutting off the offender from all communications with other States by land or sea, by mail or telegraph or telephone, and stopping all commercial intercourse of every kind. This would be a formidable engine of coercion, resembling the ecclesi- astical excommunications of the Middle Ages, and, like them, not requiring a resort to armed force. The objection has been raised that the measure would be inconvenient to the States that employed it, because their commerce as well as that of the offending State would suffer, and that it might inflict more incon- venience on some States joining in the boycott than on others. But to this it is answered that whatever that inconvenience might be, it would be less than the evils a war would cause, and that it could not last long, because no excommunicated State could support for more than a few weeks or months the painful conse- quences of total isolation, and would dread permanent injury to its commerce. The other remedy, the use of armies and fleets to coerce a recalcitrant disturber of the peace, has been objected to on the ground that it would amount to war, the very thing the proposed Combination desires to avert, and that it would require the Combination OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 253 either to maintain a military organization for its com- mon purposes or to make demands on the component States with which some might be reluctant, or perhaps unable, to comply. To this it is answered that a State unwilling to send an armed force might make its con- tribution in the form of money, its adhesion in that way being a threat to the recalcitrant State no less effective in the long run than a force of soldiers would be. Not less important is the question when the extreme remedy either of a boycott or of arms should be applied. It has been suggested that the decision to resort to either, and especially to arms, ought to be if not unanimous, yet at least accepted by all of these greater States possessing armies and navies on whom the burden of enforcement would fall. Much might turn on the attitude and probable purposes of the offending Power. If it appeared to be on the point of attacking a weaker neighbor, measures might be justifiable which ought not otherwise to be taken. My own view is that it would be better not to set out by imposing the obligation to use armed force, but you will not expect me to express a positive opinion on this point, since I cannot here and now enter at length into the argu- ments adduced on each side. It has seemed best to state frankly to you the diffi- culties which surround the attempt to create a new organization capable of preserving a general peace. No one who knows how many attempts have been unsuccessfully made in the last four or five centuries will be surprised at these difficulties. Every one who has studied the subject has recognized them. But they must not be allowed to deter us. The obstacles are 254 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS not insurmountable. Whatever they may be they must be faced; for they are far less than the perils which will continue to threaten civilization if existing conditions are prolonged. The world cannot be left where it is now. If the peoples do not try to destroy war, war will destroy them. Some kind of joint action by all the States that value peace is urgently needed, and instead of recoiling from difficulties we must recog- nize the urgency, and go forward. I have ventured to speak freely to you of the existing conditions in Europe, because they do not seem to have come truly and fully to the knowledge of most of those who are fortunate enough to dwell on this side of the Atlantic, and I have so spoken because it has become necessary that you here should realize, as we do in Europe, that it is only by the joint action of the States which lead the world that the dangers which threaten civilization can be met. Thirty or forty years ago, when both Europe and America were exulting in the advances of physical science and in the diffusion of the comforts and even of the luxuries of life which those advances had pro- duced, thoughtful men felt bound to utter warnings against over-confidence in the future, and to remind the peoples that progress in these material things does not necessarily mean that advance in intellectual and moral strength in which the true welfare of mankind consists. Today it is not words of warning but words of cheer and encouragement that need to be addressed to those whom the Great War and the calamities it has brought have driven to the verge of despair. The years of strife have wrought world-wide devastation and ruin. Thousands of ships and their cargoes lie OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 255 at the bottom of the sea; thousands of brave crews lie beside them. The labor of five years has been wasted in the work of destruction. Ten millions of men have perished. In England and France half the flower of our youth, many of whom would have been the leaders of the coming generation, minds that would have enriched the world in thought and learning, in scientific discovery, in literature and art, have been lost to us, a loss far greater than that of any material things. Before 1914 there were those who believed that war would prove a stimulating and ennobling influence on nations. But the reverse has happened. This war, though it gave splendid examples of courage and devo- tion in those who willingly offered their lives for their country in its hour of need, has disclosed, not less than any of those earlier wars which history records, the weakness of human intelligence and the fallibility of foresight in many of those to whom counsel and direc- tion belonged, statesmen and administrators and legis- lators. So far from raising, it seems rather to have depressed the tone of public life and lowered the standards of private conduct. Even the solemn warn- ing which it gave against the passions from which wars spring has not been taken. We expected that it would produce everywhere an ardent desire for peace and a resolve that the causes whence sprung these calamities should be eliminated. But this it has not done. Not to speak of the angry class struggles within the nations, we see that national hatreds and rivalries and ambi- tions are hotter than ever, and threaten to bring fresh strife upon us. It is possible I hope it is not prob- able, but it is possible that so soon as an intermission 256 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS of fighting has enabled the hostile peoples to recover their fighting capacity, some of them will fight again. The great lesson of the war, that the ambitions and hatreds which cause war must be removed, has not yet been learned, and if this war has failed to impress the lesson upon most of the peoples, what else can teach them? This is why thoughtful men are de- spondent, and why some comfort must now be sought for, some remedy devised at once against a recurrence of the calamities we have suffered. Four other lessons stand out clearly. I will briefly name them. One is the fact that the causes which produced the Great War are deep seated. They are a part of human nature, arising from faults in political human nature as it exists in all countries. Here, as in England and in France, those faults have been charged chiefly upon two States in particular, or perhaps (as respects the conspicuous manifestations of those faults) on the small governing classes in those two nations; for we must always remember that the whole body of a nation may be morally healthier than its governing class. But the faults exist everywhere, rooted in the same human propensities, and all the nations must bear their share of the blame. A glance back over the last sixty years will show this. "There is not one that doeth righteous- ness, no, not one." These faults are a part of that old statecraft which has lasted down into our so-called modern civilization. If they are to be 'expunged, they must be expunged everywhere, for their existence in any nation or group of nations keeps them alive in the others, and these others feel obliged to fight their antagonists by the methods their antagonists resort to, OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 257 and, like them, they quickly cease to see anything wrong in what seems to be necessary. A second lesson and this is one which ought to be evident to every reflective mind is that the_world is now One, one in a sense in which it was never one before. Five-sixths of the human race were involved in the Great War, which brought men to fight one another in regions where civilized armies had never contended before, in West Africa, in East Africa, in Siberia and Turkestan, on the shores of the Baikal and the Caspian, in the isles of the Western Pacific, while ships of war were fighting on all the oceans from the White Sea to the Falkland Isles. As this unity was apparent in war, so it is apparent now the war has ended. Everything that affects industry and com- merce in one country affects it in every other, and affects it instantaneously, so widespread and so swift have communications become. Electricity is the most potent of the unifying forces for the purposes of knowledge and the interchange of thought, as steam began to be for commerce a century ago. This is a fact which has "come to stay." The human race, whatever the differences between its branches, is now a unit for economic purposes, and as economics have now become a chief basis of politics, it is a unit for the purposes of international diplomacy. We see the germs of political strife in the claims made to the enjoyment of such sources of natural wealth, wherever they are found, as coal and oil. This brings us to the third lesson. Since every people, every civilized State, is now a member of one all- embracing community, everything which affects any single State necessarily affects each of the others, 258 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS primarily its economic situation, and through its eco- nomic its political situation also, its industry and its finance, its interchange of products with other countries. Think of the currency and the effects which rates of exchange have upon the relations of the Old World States not only to one another but to the Western hemisphere also. All States are now members of one economic body, and if one member suffers the other members suffer with it. The well-being of one people never permanently injures any other people, but the misfortunes and miseries of any great people injure every other people that is in political or commercial relations with the sufferers. The wealth that was destroyed in the Great War, accumulated by the labor of many peoples during many years, was a loss to all the peoples, and every future war will be an evil to all of them, and certainly not least to those which are now most advanced in prosperity and most sensitive to whatever disturbs the processes of peaceful produc- tion and exchange. Credit and security are now the things most needed for the economic recovery of the world. Security is the pre-condition to the reestab- lishment of sound business conditions anywhere and everywhere. This brings me to a fourth lesson. Every civilized nation, since its fortunes are inextricably involved with the good or evil fortunes of every other, is bound for its own sake to take an interest in the well-being of the others and to help them, in whatever way it finds best, to avoid or to recover from disasters. The greatest of disasters is War, more terrible in its consequence than earthquakes in Sicily or famines in China. A nation, or any number of nations, may stand aloof OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 259 when it or they see the disaster of war approaching, and may think it to their interest not to make any effort, or to join in efforts made by others, to avert the disaster. That is a matter which each State decides for itself. But if the disaster comes, the States that do not join will suffer, more or less in proportion to their own wealth and prosperity, in the consequences which war brings upon the world, for that which affects some cannot but affect all, all being now in the eco- nomic, if not in the Christian, sense, members of one body. Credit declines; security disappears. War therefore injures all States, and as the sources of war reside in those faults of human nature which are common to all, though at some particular moment more violently potent in one people than in another, so the work of trying to remove or reduce those sources is a task which will succeed, or fail, in proportion to the number of peoples that join in it and in proportion to the spirit in which they make those efforts. And this brings me from the sphere of material interest to the sphere of sympathy and duty. In the effort to prevent war sympathy and interest seem to coincide. Business and idealism are often deemed to stand at opposite poles, and you in this country, who have long been preeminent for the energy and skill you throw into business, are supposed by many Old World critics to be grimly practical, and nothing but practical, in your ways of thinking and acting. You are yourselves aware, as those who live among you soon become aware, that this is not so. On the contrary, there is no coun- try in which the idealistic spirit is more strong if, indeed, so strong and is so often found in keenly prac- tical men, as here in the United States. It has often 260 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS shown itself a powerful force in practical, and even in political affairs. It was said long ago that it is easy to praise the Athenians to the Athenians, but I will nevertheless, trusting you to believe that I do not mean to flatter, venture to say to you what I have often said to my own countrymen, that nowhere is there a stronger sense, if anywhere there be so strong a sense, of national duty, and nowhere a warmer devotion to high ideals than there is here in America. I do not presume to offer advice as to what America can do to avert wars over the world, or as to the man- ner in which that may best be done; nor am I here as the advocate of any scheme ; my only wish is to point out that something needs to be done and to indicate what at the moment seems the best path along which those who realize the need for action may advance. If any one fancies that we in Europe who have been labor- ing for many years past for what we hold to be the interest of our common humanity have any selfish mo- tive for our action and wish to draw in America or any other State in order to gain something for England, I know of no foundation for such an imputation. Those for whom I venture to speak, workers who have noth- ing whatever to do with our respective governments (who very often refuse the advice we offer), believe that some sort of permanently organized joint action by peace-loving peoples, whatever form it may take, is urgently needed. We rejoice that such joint action is now to be attempted in the crucial matter of the reduc- tion of armaments, and we fervently wish success to the negotiations. The plan for combined action re- cently created by the Versailles Covenant will, we trust, with whatever amendments may be found neces- OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 261 sary and it certainly needs amendments ultimately succeed, and we mean to persevere in supporting it, and all the more because it contains much needed pro- visions for the protection of backward races. Imper- fect it may be, but it is the only plan which has yet been launched with any prospect of success. All we would venture to say to you is this: The prevention of wars in the future is in the interest of every country. We Europeans are nearer to the conflagration than you are, but prairie fires spread fast. You desire the well- being of humanity no less than we do. The call of duty to save humanity makes its appeal to the sense of duty in every nation that holds a great place in the world and is proud of its historic past and the services it has already rendered to mankind. It is for you to judge in what way and by what means that duty can best be discharged. When I speak of Idealism I mean not that blind faith in the certainty of human progress which was engendered fifty years ago by the triumphs of applied science and the prosperity they brought, but rather that aspiration for a world more enlightened and more happy than that which we see today, a world in which the cooperation of men and nations rather than their rivalry and the aggrandizement of one at the expense of the other, shall be the guiding aims. Good-will sweetens life; nobody is so happy as he who rejoices in the happiness of others. Hatred has never brought anything but evil. The sensible idealist and he is not the less an idealist, and a far more useful one, if he is sensible, and sees the world as it is is not a visionary, but a man who feels that the forces making fox good may and probably will tend to prevail 262 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS against those making for evil, but will prevail only if the idealists join in a constant effort to make them prevail. The greatest of Roman poets has com- pared the cultivator of the soil who must ceaselessly struggle against the obstacles which storms and droughts and noxious insects create to his raising crops from it, to a man who rows his boat up a swift river and will be swept downstream if he relaxes for a moment his efforts to make way against the current. 1 So it is only by constant exertions and by quenchless hopes that those human relations, those moral things which are the most important for happiness, can be made to move forward against the forces that resist them. The oars must never be allowed to drop for a moment from the rower's hands, nor his muscles to re- lax their strain. You may ask, What is it that any one of us, you here or we in England, can do as individual citizens to improve the character of international relations, and especially to provide security against the outbreak of future wars? To answer this question let me say a few concluding words bearing not only on the causes of war but on the whole subject of international policies which we have been studying. We have already seen how much violence and deceit there has been in the conduct of States towards one another, how much national ambition and national vanity, masquerad- ing under the garb of patriotism, in the minds of peoples as well as among their leaders, and how the leaders have played upon these foibles and follies 1 Non aliter quam qui adverse vix flumine lembum. Remigiis subigit, si brachia forte remisit, Atque ilium in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni. Virgil Georg. I. 201. OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 283 of the individual citizens. Now, what is a State? Nothing but so many individual citizens organized into one community. Such as the citizens are, such will the leaders be, because they desire to please the citizens. If the citizens are swayed by the impulses of vanity and ambition, their leaders will try to win support by playing up or playing down to such pas- sions. If, on the other hand, the citizens demand from those who guide the State uprightness and fair dealing and a considerate respect for the rights of others, and if they reprobate and dismiss any statesman who falls below the moral standard they set up, their leaders will try to conform to that standard. If the moral standards of States have been generally lower than those of the average good citizens in a civilized coun- try, why has this been so? Because rapacity and vanity and hatred and revenge are mitigated or re- duced in private social life by sympathy, kindliness and affection, these beneficent human feelings tempering or restraining or overcoming the bitter and unwhole- some passions. In the relations of States these better feelings have had little or no scope and power, because men do not feel towards other States as they do feel towards their neighbors and acquaintances. If the sentiment of a common humanity which moves your hearts when you hear of sufferings in other countries, the sentiment which made you send splendidly gener- ous gifts for the relief at one time of Sicilian sufferers from the earthquake at Messina and at another of Chinese peasants dying of famine, which led your Government to remit the Boxer indemnities and made you as private citizens subscribe tens of millions of dollars to feed the children of the Armenian mothers 264 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS slaughtered by the Turks in 1915 if that sentiment, coupled with the sense that all nations are the children of one Father in Heaven, were to lay hold of the peoples of the world and make them regard the peoples of other countries as fellow-citizens in the common- wealth of mankind, would not the attitude of States towards one anther be changed, and changed funda- mentally for the better? Would not the sense of cooperation temper the eagerness of competition, and reinforce the belief that more will be gained for each and all by peace than has been gained or ever will be gained by war? You may say, What can private citizens do? Well, the State is made up of private citizens and such as they are such will the State be. Each of us as individuals can do little, but many animated by the same feeling and belief can do much. What is Democracy for except to represent and express the convictions and wishes of the people? The citi- zens of a democracy can do everything if they express their united will. The raindrops that fall from the clouds unite to form a tiny rill, and, meeting other rills, it becomes a rivulet, and the rivulet grows to a brook, and the brooks as they join one another swell into a river that sweeps in its resistless course down- ward to the sea. Each of us is only a drop, but together we make up the volume of public opinion which determines the character and action of a State. What all the nations now need is a public opinion which shall in every nation give more constant thought and keener attention to international policy, and lift it to a higher plane. The peoples can do this in every country if the best citizens give them the lead. You in America are well fitted to set an example in this OTHER POSSIBLE METHODS FOR AVERTING WAR 265 effort to the European peoples smitten down by the war, and painfully struggling to regain their feet. They will gratefully welcome whatever you may do now or hereafter by sympathy and counsel or by active cooperation in efforts to redress the injustices and mitigate the passions which distract most parts of the Old World. Your help, your powerful and dis- interested help, will be of incomparable service in every effort to rescue your brother peoples from the oldest and deadliest of all the evils that have afflicted mankind. (END OF LECTURE 8.) INDEX Abdul Hamid, Sultan, 23-24, 155; massacre of Eastern Christians by, 208. Adams, Charles Francis, biogra- phy of, 154. Adrianople, given to Turkey by Treaty of Sevres, 67. Aerenthal, Count von, breach of treaty by, 170. Afghan War, unjust and unneces- sary, 183; condemned by Eng- lish electors, 187. Africa, spread of Islam in and consequent improvement of negroes, 116. Alabama Claims, settlement of, by arbitration, 226. Albania, independence of, 54. Alexander I of Russia, 25. Alexander II of Russia, 150. Alexander VI, Pope, 15; bull is- sued by, 18-19. Alliances, defensive, between states, 235-236; objections to, 236-238. Alsace, results of annexation of, to Germany, 36. Althing, Icelandic assembly, 162- 163. Ambassadors, high qualities of American, 150, 157; value of work of, 159-160. See Diplo- macy. American Society of Interna- tional Law, work of, 172-173. Anarchists, propaganda of, 22; influence of, on foreign poli- cies of states, 129-130. Angell, James B., excellence as an ambassador, 150. Angora, headquarters of Turkish Nationalists, 68. Arbitral tribunals, 145, 175, 219. Arbitration, method of, for re- moving causes of friction be- tween states, 219-225; interna- tional disputes open to settle- ment by, 225-226; alternative plans, 235 ff.; use of method, in plan for combination of states (League of Nations), 246-247. Argentina, development of na- tional sentiment in, 121. Armaments, growth in size of, 210-211; plans and conferences looking to reduction of, 212- 214; dependent upon national policy, 218-219; removal of causes of friction .essential to reduction of, 219. Armenia, position of, 67-69; strength of character of people, 69; future of, hanging in the balance, 70-71; sentiment of nationality created by religion in people of, 120. Armies, feelings of officers of, to- ward officers of enemy armies, 135-136; increase in magnitude of, 210-211. Asia, results of Great War to countries of, 65-72; inflam- mable material in, 72; in- fluence of religion in, on inter- national relations, 115-116; na- tional sentiment in countries of, 122. Australasia, exclusion of foreign races from, 128. Australia, import duties in, 82- 83; sentiment of patriotic self- reliance in, 87; Chinese in, 126. Austria, results of Great War as affecting, 44-47; present piti- able condition of, 48-49. 267 268 INDEX Azerbaijan, possible future re- covery of, by Russia, 65; now controlled by Bolsheviks, 70. Bacon, Robert, statesmanship of, 96 n. Balance of power, origin of, 16. Ballin, Hamburg-American head, the case of, 91-92. Baltic States, position of, 63-64; danger of, from Russia, 64. Belgium, policy of neutralizing, 171. Berlin, Congress of, 16, 207. Berlin-Bagdad railroad, 99. Bismarck, effects of policies of, 27-28; on "preventive wars," 146; "Hound of the Empire" of, 152; information on diplo- matic methods gathered from, 154; subsidized press of, 182. Bolshevists, prospects of, in Rus- sia, 58; attempted conquest of Poland by, 61 ; work of, in Ukrainia, 63; armies of, in Far East, 71. Borgia, Cesare, Italian states- man, 15, 189. Bosnia, included in Yugo-Slavia, 52; former annexation of, to Austria a breach of treaty, 170. Boundaries, doctrine of natural or strategic, 124-126. Boycott, use of, against offend- ing state by combination of states, 252. Brazil, sentiment of nationality in, 121. Bribery, former use of, in diplo- macy, 109-110. British Empire, tariffs in com- monwealths of, 85-86. Bulgaria, present position of, 54- 56; isolation of, 57. California, Chinese in, 126. Canada, tariff in, 85, 86; treaty between United States and, as to fishing rights, 95-96; phe- nomenon presented by French- speaking population of, 122. Caribbean republics, national spirit among, 121. Carinthia, plebiscite in, 45. Cavour, work of, 28; biography of, 154; and Louis Napoleon, 155-156. Charlemagne, champion of Christianity, 11. Chile, national sentiment in, 121. China, present position of, 71-72; consortium of banks for, 110. Chinese immigrants, rights of, 126; laws against, 127-129. Christian church, wars between peoples due to, 10-12. Church peace, the, 13. Clovis, champion of Western church, 11. Coal, importance of, in interna- tional relations, 75-76. Cobden, Richard, advocacy of free trade by, 80; treaty nego- tiated by, with Louis Napo- leon, 84. Colonies, motives of European countries in acquiring, 106-109. Combination of states, plan for (League of Nations), 246-250; questions concerning, 250-254; ultimate success predicted for, 260-261. Commerce, influence of, on for- eign relations, 74-111; interests of, among chief causes of war, 145. Communism, propaganda of, 22; question of workability of, in Russia, 58; influence of, on foreign policy of states, 129- 130. Concert of Europe, creation of, 207-208. Conciliation, method of, for set- tling disputes between states, 226-233; enforcement of deci- sions of courts of, 233-234; al- ternative plans, 235 ff.; use of method, in plan for combina- tion of states (League of Na- tions), 246-247. Conferences, diplomatic, as a device for improving interna- INDEX 269 tional relations, 206 ff.; Hague, 207, 208-209; Congresses of Utrecht, Vienna, and Berlin, 207-208; cases to which spe- cially suitable, 210; disarma- ment, 210-219. Covenant in Treaty of Ver- sailles, 233, 248, 260 : 261. Croatia, included in Yugo- slavia, 52. Cuba, American intervention in, 170. Czecho-Slovakia, the new repub- lic of, 45; alliance between Rumania, Yugo-Slavia, and, 238-239. Dalmatia, included in Yugo- slavia, 52. Dante, De Monarchic* of, 14. Danube, international rights to navigation of, 94. Diplomacy, date of beginning of, 148; former character com- pared with present-day, 149- 150; qualities needed in, 150- 152; business of, in peace times, 152-153; study of, in biographies of statesmen, 153- 154; truth-telling and false- hood in, 154-156; maxims of, 156-158; real value of, 159- 160; popular participation in, 176 ff.; reasons for secret, 184- 189. Disarmament, conference on, at Washington, 210; certain hard problems of, 214-217; to be ac- companied by removal of causes of friction, 219. Divine right theory, Holy Alli- ance based on, 25. Dobrudsha, question of the, 56. Educated classes, influence of, on international policies, 133-138. Egypt, financial history of, 101. Emperor, Holy Roman, duty of, to prevent wars, 13-14; weak- ening of position of, as de- fender of the peace. 14. England, trade relations between Germany and, before Great War, 88-90; trading interest of, in colonial policy, 106-107; re- pudiation by, of doctrine of strategic boundary, 124; secret treaty with Turkey, 184-185. Enver Bey, 23. Envoys. See Diplomacy. Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace by, 18. Erivan, capital of Armenian re- public, 68, 70. Esthonia, independence of, 59. Falsehood in diplomacy, 154-156. Family relationships, influence of dynastic, on international rela- tions, 113-114. Fear, wars due to, 146. Federation, World, conception of, 239-245. Finance, influence of interna- tional, on diplomacy, 100-111; interests of, among chief causes of war, 145. Finland, present position of, 59. Fishing rights, international con- troversies over, 94-98. Flags of truce, 8. Foreign office, diplomatic pro- fession and the, 149 ff. Foreign policy, the demand for democratic control of, 176-205. Foreigners, exclusion of, 127-129. Fourteen Points, national as- pirations admitted by, 122. France, effects upon, of Great War, 42-44; friendship of, for Poland, 61 ; sphere of com- mercial influence of, in Asia Minor, 67; loans of, to Russia, 102-103; motives of, in colo- nial ventures, 106. Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, as- sassination of, 33. Freedom of the seas, meaning of phrase, 93-94. Free trade, arguments pro and con, 81-83. French Revolution, propaganda used during, 21. 270 INDEX Friars as envoys, 149. Friends, Society of, theory of non-resistance of, 198. Friendship, forces which create, between states, 131-140. Georgia, controlled by Bolshe- viks, 70. Germans, "Great" and "Little," 33-34. Germany, view of, taken by English Liberals in 1870, 35- 36; effect upon, of victory over France, 36; results to, of Great War, 42-44; trade relations with Russia before 1914, 88; relations with England, 88-90; lack of colonies of, 90-91; material considerations no re- straint upon, in entering on war, 91; motives and methods of, in colonial policy and for- eign trade, 107-108. Gladstone, W. E., on limitations on generosity of states, 203. Governments, adverse influence of, on friendship between na- tions, 140-141. Grand Design, scheme called, 18. Great Britain, tariff in, 85-86. See England. Great War, causes leading up to, 33-38; review of results of, 39- 73; lessons derived from, 256- 259. Greeks, relations between Mac- edonians and, 56; sentiment of nationality among, 120. Grotius, on international law, 164. Hague Conferences, 207; aims and accomplishments of, 208- 209. Hanseatic League, example of defensive alliance, 235. Hay, John, as an ambassador, 150. Heraclitus, on knowledge and wisdom, 137. Herzegovina, included in Yugo- slavia, 52. Hesiod, cited, 4. Hill, David J., on international law, 164. Hindu immigrants, rights of, 126. Hofer, Andreas, Tyrolese patriot, 47. Holland, profit to, from East Indian possessions, 106. Holy Alliance, an attempt to prevent war, 24-25; reason for failure of, 25-26. Hungary, effects of Great War upon, 49-53. Iceland, laws of primitive, 162- 163. Idealism in United States, 259- 260, 261-262. Indemnities, Germany's ability to pay, 44. Individuals, morality of, and of states, contrasted, 190-196. Intellectual leaders, influence of, on international relations, 133- 136. International copyright, provi- sions for, 171. International law, beginnings of, 8; not really a law, 160-162; practical effect of law pos- sessed by, 162-164; strong moral sanction of, 164; definite rules of, 165-166; subjects to be dealt with by, 167-172; pro- posed organization for revising, 172-173; enforcement of rules of, 174-175. International relations, influence of monotheistic religions on, 9-13; influence of Pope and Holy Roman Emperor on, 13- 15; evolution of, resulting in device of balance of power, 16 ; effects upon, of discovery of new lands, 18-19; influence of Holy Alliance, 24-26; influence of Napoleon Bonaparte, 26- 27; results of Bismarck's ac- tivities, 27-28; influence of Cavour, Kossuth, and Mazzini, 28-29; influenced by leaders INDEX 271 rather than by masses of peo- ple, 30-31; results of Great War on, 41-73; influence of commerce on, 74-1 1 1 ; influence of family relationships be- tween dynasties on, 113-114; power of religion on, at pres- ent time, 114-116; influence of racial sentiment, or nation- ality, 116-126; effects of infrac- tions of rights of minorities, 126-127; questions raised by exclusion of foreign races, 127- 129; forces of friendship which affect, 131-140; influence of governments themselves, 140- 141 ; influence of politicians, 141-142; influence of the press, 142-144; diplomacy and, 148- 160; as affected by interna- tional law, 160-175; question of popular control of, 176-205; conference method for improv- ing, 206-219; method of arbi- tration applied to, 219-226; method of conciliation or mediation, 226-233 ; alliances as a device for controlling, 235-239; idea of a super-state, 239-245. Ireland, sentiment of national- ity in, 121. Islam, rise of, and effect on in- ternational relations, 10, 115- 116; improvement of African negroes by, 116. Italy, decadence of religious power in, in reference to in- ternational relations, 14-15; unification of, by Cavour, 28; results to, of Great War, 46- 47; sphere of commercial in- fluence of, in Asia Minor, 67; doctrine of strategic boundary illustrated by, 125. Japan, present state of, 71-72. Japanese immigrants, rights of, 126; laws against, 127-129. Jews, sentiment of nationality among, 120. Journalism. See Press. Justiciable disputes between states, 221, 223; wars outside the category of, 223-225. Korea, Japan's grip on, 72. Kossuth, Louis, 22; memories of, 28-29. Laborism, as a force affecting foreign policies of states, 130- 131. Latin American countries, fi- nances and politics of, 101- 102; sentiment of nationality in, 121. Latvia, new country of, 59-60; spirit of nationality in, 120. League of Nations, 52, 246-250; questions affecting, 250-254. Leagues between states, 235-236. Liberal doctrines, influence of, on international relations, 129- 130. Lincoln, Abraham, feeling for, in Europe, 134. Lithuania, independence of, 60; sentiment of nationality among people of, 120. Loans, interests in foreign coun- tries acquired by, 100-103. Louis Napoleon, 34; results of overthrow of, by Germany, 35- 36; Cavour and, 155-156. Louis XI of France, 15. Louis XIV of France, 17, 19. Macedonia, results to, of Paris Conference, 55-56. Machiavelli, The Prince by, 15; theory of rights of states enun- ciated by, 198. Magyars, effects upon, of Treaty of Trianon, 50-51 ; resolve of, to recover lost territories, 51- 52; national feeling among, 120. Manchuria, China's weak hold on, 71. Marsilius of Padua, Dejensor Pads of, 14. Masaryk, President of Czecho- slovak Republic, 45. 272 INDEX Maxims for diplomatists, 156- 158. Mazzini, influence of, 29. Mediation, method of, for set- tling disputes between states, 226-233. Mennonites, theory of non-re- sistance held by, IQ^IQO. Mexico, national sentiment in, 121; outside intervention in affairs of, 170. Minorities, infractions of rights of, a ground for war, 126- 127. Montenegro, included in Yugo- slavia, 52. Morality of states, 188-205. Moravian Brethren, theory of non-resistance of, 199. Minister, Congress of, 16. Napoleon I, influence of, on Eu- ropean politics, 26-27; diplo- matic maxims of, 157. Nationality, principles of, vio- lated by Powers at Paris Con- ference, 46-47, 124-126; influ- ence of, on international rela- tions, 116; what constitutes, 116-117; definition of Senti- ment of, 118; countries in which found, 119-120; among Armenians, Jews, and Irish, 120-121 ; created by religion among Armenians and Jews, 120-121 ; in the Americas, 121-122; in Asiatic countries, 122; of French in Canada, 122. Natural boundaries, doctrine of, 124-126. Navies, admiration of officers of, for officers of enemy navies, 135-136; modern vast growth of, 210. Newfoundland fisheries, treaties concerning, 96-97. Newspapers. See Press. New Zealand, import duties in, 82-83. Non-resistance, theory of, 198- 200. North German League, creation of, 34. North Sea, traffic in strong drink on, 97-98. Oil, influence of, on international relations, 77. Open Door policy, questions con- cerning, 171. Osnabriick, Congress of, 16. Pan-Islam ism, example of propa- ganda, 23. Pan-Slavism, ethnological propa- ganda, 23. Pan-Turanianism, 23. Paris Peace Conference, 16; comparison of, with Congress of Vienna, 39-40; want of so- called Supermen at, 41 ; viola- tion of principles of Nation- ality at, 46-47, 124-126; effect of, on demand for democratic control of foreign policy, 177- 178. See Versailles, Treaty of. Patents, international protection of, 171. Pax Ecclesice, the, 13. Pax Romano, the, 9. Persia, prospects of, 71; effect of oil fields in, 77. Plato, quoted on the State of Nature, 4; discussion of rights of states by, 198 n. Poland, prospects and problems of, 60-62. Politicians, adverse influence of, on friendship between nations, 141-142. Pope, early function of, as de- fender of the peace, 13; weak- ening of position of, 14-15. Precious metals, influence of de- sire for, on international rela- tions, 75. Press, influence of the, for ill- will between nations, 142-144; treatment of problem of, by diplomatists, 158-159; power of, and its misuse, 181-182; corruptibility of, in some coun- tries, 182. INDEX 273 Preventive wars, 17, 146. Production, forces of, and in- fluence on international rela- tions, 75-77. Propaganda, campaigns of, 20- 22; recent illustrations of, 22- 23; ethnological, 23-24; aim of modern, 24; use of press for purposes of, 182. Racial sentiment, influence of, on international relations, '116- 126. See Nationality. Radical doctrines, foreign poli- cies as influenced by, 129-130. Railroads, international trade in- terests affected by, 98-100. Red Cross, example of an inter- national institution, 171. Religion, influence of monotheis- tic, on international relations, 9-13; present-day power of, in international politics, 114-116; sentiment of nationality in- spired by, 120-121 ; one of chief causes of war, 145; interna- tional antipathies due to, an obstacle to World Federation, 244-245. Religious orders, formerly links between peoples, 138, 139-140; members of, as envoys to for- eign countries, 149. Rhine, not a natural boundary between France and Germany, 124. Riga, capital of Latvia, 59. Rivers, international navigation of, 94; fishing rights in, 95- 96. Roman Empire, approximate world-peace under, 9. Roosevelt, Theodore, treaties made during presidency of, 219-220. Root, Elihu, tribute to, 96 n.; on settlement of controversies between states, 160; as an in- ternational jurist, 173. Rumania, relations of Bulgaria and, 56; new alliance of, 238- 239. Russia, present position of, 57- 59; future course of, 64-65; a market for Germany before the war, 88; effects of desire of, for warm-water harbor, 92-93; French loans to, 102-103 ; cases of breach of treaties by, 168- 169. St. Germain, Treaty of, 44-45; effects of, upon Austria, 48-49. Scotland, people of, a national- ity, 119-120. Secret diplomacy, arguments for and against, 184-189, 204-205. See Diplomacy. Self-determination, principles of, overlooked by Powers at Paris Conference, 124-126. Serbia, included in Yugo-Slavia, 52. Sevres, Treaty of, 66-67. Shakespeare, love of Germans for, 133. Shuster, Morgan, in Persia, 71. Skipetar tribes of Albania, 54. Slave trade, influence of, on pol- icy of great states, 78-79. Slovenes in Yugo-Slavia, 53. South African War of 1899, 183; adverse judgment on, by Eng- lish electors, 187; a justiciable dispute, 225-226; fit subject for court of conciliation, 230. South America, sentiment of nationality in countries of, 121. Spain, incapacity of, for profit- ing from colonial trade, 106. Spitzbergen, effect of discovery of coal in, 76-77. State, evolution of word, 19-20. State of Nature, different views of, 3-5. States, morality of, 188-200; statement of rules of morality for, 200-201 ; limitations on vir- tuous acts of, 203-204; mean- ing of "national honor" and "vital interest" of, 219-221. Superman, lack of a, at Paris Conference, 41. 274 INDEX Super-state, conception of a, 239- 245. Switzerland, importance of neu- trality of, emphasized by rail- roads, 98-99; people of, a real nationality, 119; policy of neu- tralizing, 171. Tariff wars, 84-85. Tariffs, protective, 81-83. Territory, lust for, among chief causes of war, 145-146. Thirty Years' War, 16. Three Emperors, League of, 24- 26, 236. Thucydides, cited, 198. Tirol, annexation of, by Italy, 46-47. Trade, and international rela- tions, 78-92 ; questions concern- ing routes of, 92-100; confer- ence method for settling dis- putes concerning, 210. Transportation and international relations, 92-100. Treaties, commercial, 83-86; period of duration of, 168-170; secret, 184-185; scope of arbi- tration relative to, 219-221. Trianon, Treaty of, effects of, on Hungary, 50-53. Triple Alliance, 236, 237. Triple Entente, 237. Truce of God, 13. Tunnels, railroad, in politics, 98- 90. Turkestan, present condition of, 71. Turkey, results to, of Great War and present position of, 65-69; mystery in lenient treatment of, by Allies, 69; European loans to, 101 ; secret agreement between England and, 184-185. Ukrainia, present position and prospects for the future, 62-63. Union labor and foreign policies, 130-131. United States, fishery treaties of, with Canada, 95-96; present- day power of financial inter- ests of, 100; tribute to ambas- sadors of, 150, 157; fitness of, for work relating to interna- tional law, 172-173; idealistic spirit in, 259-260; part to be taken by, in averting wars, 260-261. Universities, formerly links be- tween peoples, 138. Uruguay, sentiment of national- ity in, 121. Utrecht, Congress of, 16, 207. Venezuela, finances of, 102. Venizelos, statesmanship of, 56. Versailles, Treaty of, 39-41; re- sults of, to countries of Europe and Asia, 41-73; importance of coal shown in provisions of, 75-76; plan of, for preventing future wars, 233; provisions of, as to Council of League of Na- tions, 248. Victoria, Queen, influence of, for maintenance of peace, 114. Vienna, city of, effects of Treaty of St. Germain upon, 48-49. Vienna, Congress of, 16; Holy Alliance born at, 24-25; Paris Peace Conference compared with, 39-40; character of, 207. Virgil, cited, 4; illustration from, 262. Vorarlberg, rejection of applica- tion of, to join Swiss Confed- eration, 48. War, view of, as the State of Nature, 4; preponderance of, in history, 6-8; beginnings of international law in connection with, 8; influence of monothe- istic religions on, 9-13; plan of balance of power to prevent, 16-17; beginnings of secular plans to prevent, 17-18; Holy Alliance a further attempt to prevent, 24-25; summary of chief causes of, in modern times, 144-146; rules of inter- national law affecting, 165-167; cases of, not susceptible to AT- INDEX 275 bitration on legal principles, 223-225; avoidance of, by methods of conferences, of arbitration, and of conciliation, 206-233; plan for a combina- tion of states to prevent, 246 ff . ; if not destroyed by peoples of world, peoples will be de- stroyed by, 254; the opposite of an ennobling influence, 255; lessons from the Great War, 256-258; all states of world in- jured by, 258-260. Washington, D. C., disarmament conference at, 210. Washington, George, reverence for, in Europe, 134. Wealth, national, influence on international relations, 75- 76. Westphalia, Treaties of, 16. White, Sir William, British am- bassador, 150. Wilson, Woodrow, the Fourteen Points of, 122. World Council, conception of, 209. World Federation, plan of, 239- 245. Yugo-Slavia, new kingdom of, 52-54; relations with Austria, Hungary, and Italy, 53-54; re- ligious parties in, 114-115; al- liance of, with Rumania and Czecho-Slovakia, 238-239. Zeal, avoidance of, by diplomat- ists, 158. Zionist movement, rise of, 120. Zollverein, formation of, and re- sults, 85. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed OCT 2 2001 SKL-F QUARTER LOAN 50m-l,'63(D4743s8)476 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 001 070 571 3